
	Where results make sense

Topic: Mutually unintelligible

In the News (Wed 30 Dec 09)

Northern Trust

Marvin Harrison

Peter Chernin

Gary Locke

Match Play

Penelope Cruz

Mickey Rourke

AR Rahman

Danny Boyle

Hugh Jackman

	Mutually intelligible languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a property exhibited by two or more distinct languages when speakers of one or more of the languages can readily understand at least one or more of the other language(s) without intentional study or extraordinary effort.
		Mutual intelligibility can be asymmetric between the languages, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first.
		Russian and Polish are largely not mutually intelligible but Ukrainian is mutually intelligible to some degree to both, being believed by many to be an intermediary form in the dialect continuum.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Mutually_unintelligible (1332 words)

	MSN Encarta - Language
		If two speech varieties are not mutually intelligible, then the speech varieties are different languages; if they are mutually intelligible but differ systematically from one another, then they are dialects of the same language.
		There are problems with this definition, however, because many levels of mutual intelligibility exist, and linguists must decide at what level speech varieties should no longer be considered mutually intelligible.
		In addition, chains of speech varieties exist in which adjacent speech varieties are mutually intelligible, but speech varieties farther apart in the chain are not.
	encarta.msn.com /encyclopedia_761570647_3/Language.html (1095 words)

	Spoken Chinese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		regional speech), the differences between the major spoken variations of Chinese are such that they are mutually unintelligible.
		The general situation is one of dialect continuum where one can understand perfectly people speaking the local dialect and that the intelligibility decreases as the speaker comes from more and more distant regions.
		By contrast, there are areas in northern China that are several hundred kilometers apart but have mutually intelligible forms of Mandarin.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Spoken_Chinese (1920 words)

	Chinese language \| Antimoon Forum
		I have always been interested in the Chinese language, but I came to understand that it is not one language, but many dialects, which are mutually unintelligible.
		So their languages are mutually unintelligible in both spoken and written form.
		Although the written language is the same (and the two writing systems are to an extent mutually intelligible), the grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax) of the different languages is not the same.
	www.antimoon.com /forum/posts/6507.htm (1221 words)

	Singapore - The Chinese
		The migrants spoke at least five mutually unintelligible Chinese languages, each of which contained numerous regional dialects.
		Singaporean usage, however, following the common Chinese tendency to assert cultural unity, referred to mutually unintelligible speech systems as "dialects." All the Chinese languages and dialects shared common origins and grammatical structures and could be written with the same Chinese idiograms, which represent meaning rather than sound.
		Chaozhou is immediately south of the Hokkien-speaking area of Fujian, and both Teochiu and Hokkien are closely related languages of the Minnan group, mutually intelligible to native speakers after sufficient practice.
	countrystudies.us /singapore/16.htm (1059 words)

	Heathenry
		By the year 700 CE, the various dialects of the common- Germanic language were becoming mutually unintelligible and evolving into German, Dutch, English, and the Scandinavian languages.
		Wights are understood to vary in their concerns and behavior on the basis of mood, character, and circumstance, and two wights of the same kind may have very different personalities.
		One heathen might be oath-bound to Thor and leave offerings for his house brownie, another might honour her disir (female ancestral spirits) on a regular basis, another might work closely with the class of gods known as the Vanir.
	www.wyrdwords.vispa.com /APT/articles/traditions/heathenry.html (1315 words)

	Say happy new year in your language! (page 3) \| Antimoon Forum (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		On the other hand, not even all Italian "dialects" are mutually intelligible, I have witnessed this in connection with the standard dialect (deriving from Tuscan) and Genoese or Piedmontese, they seem to be completely different, and some may claim that the latter are not dialects at all, but separate languages.
		Another good example that dialects are not always mutually intelligible are the three main dialects of Croatian: they are named according to the word they used for "what?": "shto", "kaj" and "cha".
		They are not mutually intelligible, although they are spoken over a relatively small territory.
	www.antimoon.com /forum/posts/6260-3.htm (976 words)

	Language - Population - China - Asia
		The Chinese dialects are tonal in nature, meaning that words are assigned a distinctive relative pitch—high or low—or a distinctive pitch contour—level, rising, or falling.
		Because the regional dialects have different tones and syntax, they are generally mutually unintelligible.
		Although the Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible in their spoken forms, they share a common written form.
	www.countriesquest.com /asia/china/population/language.htm (454 words)

	Linguists' Definition: mutual intelligibility (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		How do we define mutual intelligibility: sometimes speakers of form A claim to understand form B, but speakers of form B deny that they understand form A. e.g.
		a chain of mutually intelligible `lects' where there is never any clear break in m.i., but speakers of dialects at one end don't understand speakers of lects at the other end: Paris to Lisbon; Calcutta to Bombay; the Arabic `dialects' e.g Yemeni to Maghrebi; many (sub)dialects of Chinese.
		Many spoken dialects may be mutually unintelligible, but the literary dialect unites them, and they all learn it as the language of education.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /~haroldfs/messeas/langdial/node2.html (514 words)

	untitled
		Language refers either to a single linguistic norm (when there is just one dialect) or to a group of related norms (each of which is a dialect).
		some unitary system of linguistic communication which subsumes a number of mutually intelligible varieties.
		Many Croatians: they are two different languages Case 3 (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) They are mutually intelligible.
	www.uwm.edu /~tslim/lecture/langvsdial.htm (388 words)

	Requests for new languages/China - Meta
		Please notice that zh-cn and zh-tw are mutually intelligible languages.
		All of them are not mutually intelligible to the zh group and among themselves.
		Mutually unintelligible with other dialect groups of Chinese.
	meta.wikimedia.org /wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/China (1974 words)

	HF ENG 111 Language and Society: Lecture 6, page 2 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		A trade context inevitably leads to encounters between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages.
		A pidgin is an auxiliary language arising (typically in a trade situation) among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages.
		A pidgin is characterised by far-reaching restructuring of grammar in comparison to the languages that were brought into contact; it is analytical rather than synthetic.
	www.hf.ntnu.no /engelsk/staff/johannesson/111SoS/L06-o02.htm (417 words)

	[No title]
		In international politics, business, and education, in the media, and on the Internet, it is likely that English will remain mutually intelligible because of the constant interaction (electronic and otherwise) between the Englishes of various parts of the world, and the value of English as lingua franca.
		At the same time, it also seems likely that mutually unintelligible forms of English will increasingly develop as the language is taught and learned in areas of the world which are isolated from contact with first-language speakers.
		For example, English is used in Africa as the language of communication between people of different language groups who have absolutely no contact with English speakers, and this can lead to the development of pidgin varieties with numerous borrowings from one or more of the local languages.
	www.askoxford.com /globalenglish/worldenglish/future?view=print (421 words)

	Wir Ain Leid - Language or Dialect?
		"A language is a collection of mutually intelligible dialects" -; A definition which conveniently characterises a dialect as a subpart of a language, and provides a criteria for distinguishing between one language and another.
		In places far apart the 'dialects' spoken are mutually unintelligible, though all across the dialect continuum a chain of mutual intelligibility exists.
		The dialects of Scots are, with their differing pronunciation, grammar, lexis and accents, mutually intelligible to Scots speakers.
	www.scots-online.org /grammar/lang.htm (1704 words)

	Spoken Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Chinese is a family of closely-related but mutually unintelligible languages.
		All varieties of Chinese belong to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and each one has its own dialects and sub-dialects, which are more or less mutually intelligible.
		The major varieties of Chinese are mutually unintelligible, but most people in China and Taiwan who don't speak Mandarin as their first language, can speak or at least understand it a bit.
	www.omniglot.com /writing/chinese_spoken.htm (634 words)

	Dialect and working class writing
		It’s tempting to define a language as a group of dialects that are mutually intelligible.
		However: Chambers and Trudgill (Dialectology) point to the example of the Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish which are mutually intelligible as opposed to the variations in German which are not mutually unintelligible.
		That which emerges out of the necessity of communication between two mutually unintelligible languages – often as a result of trade and other forms of exchange that don’t require sustained and sophisticated communication.
	www.staff.vu.edu.au /syson/301610.html (685 words)

	Intro to Tagalog Language
		Although these languages are in some ways grammatically and lexically similar, they are mutually unintelligible.
		Depending on their region of origin, Filipino immigrants will speak at least one dialect of one of these mutually unintelligible languages.
		To promote cross-cultural and transnational understanding and mutual appreciation, wide access to the Filipino language is essential.
	www.seasite.niu.edu /Tagalog/Tagalog_Homepage99/the_tagalog_language.htm (938 words)

	Bhutan Languages (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Bhutanese speak one or more of four major, mutually unintelligible languages.
		Traditionally, public and private communications, religious materials, and official documents were written in chhokey, the classical Tibetan script, and a Bhutanese adaptive cursive script was developed for correspondence.
		The Department of Education declared in 1979 that because Dzongkha was the national language, it was "the responsibility of each and every Bhutanese to learn Dzongkha." To aid in language study, the department also published a Dzongkha dictionary in 1986.
	www.country-studies.com /bhutan/languages.html (400 words)

	Native People: Northwest Coast
		In Georgia Strait, below the Southern Kwakiutl, are speakers of 7 mutually unintelligible Coast Salish languages: Comox, Pentlatch (extinct) and Sechelt, together referred to as NORTHERN GEORGIA STRAIT COAST SALISH, and Squamish, Halkomelem, Nooksack (now only in Washington state) and Straits Salish, together called CENTRAL COAST SALISH.
		In summary, there are 19 mutually unintelligible languages spoken on the Northwest Coast of BC, and these in turn belong to 5 separate units among which no relationship has yet been clearly established (see NATIVE PEOPLE, LANGUAGES; LANGUAGE FAMILIES: TABLE).
		Although the earliest settlement of the Northwest Coast occurred probably 10 000 years ago (see PREHISTORY), the first contact with Europeans came late in the 18th century, when Spanish and British explorers opened the way for traders seeking rich stocks of sea-otter pelts.
	www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com /PrinterFriendly.cfm?Params=A1ARTA0009069 (2431 words)

	.history chinese language \| amazonian project
		Although they employ a common written form, many are mutually unintelligible.
		The majority of Chinese characters, however, consist of two elements: a "signific", which indicates the meaning of a word, and a "phonetic", which indicates the sound.
		Despite their staggering complexity, the Chinese characters do have the advantage of making written communication possible between people speaking mutually unintelligible dialects and languages.
	www.amazonias.org /hchinese.htm (425 words)

	Time and Eternity (Vol.6) - Pt.V, CH.3
		It is in fact impossible to fix an approximate period for the rise of such new forms of speech.
		But this is not yet the whole of the story, since the twenty-one languages further separated and elaborated themselves into a hundred and thirteen known dialects." Some of these in turn were as different as Swedish is from German, making their speakers unable to communicate.
		By greatly accelerating this process, God could have easily seen to it that those who took responsibility for carrying out different parts of the program in the building of the city and the Tower of Babel very soon found themselves unable to understand one another -- particularly since it was an unusual undertaking.
	www.custance.org /Library/Volume6/Part_V/Chapter3.html (4585 words)

	Chinese - Family of Languages?
		Spoken Chinese comprises many regional and mutually unintelligible variants.
		In the West, many people are familiar with the fact that the Romance languages all derive from Latin and so have many underlying features in common while being mutually unintelligible.
		So although it is true that many parts of north China are quite homogeneous in language, while in parts of south China, major cities can have dialects that are only marginally intelligible even to close neighbours, these are all regarded as hua - equal subvariations under a single Chinese language.
	www.chineseculture.info /language/familyoflanguages.htm (590 words)

	Varieties of English: Definition and Instruction (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Mutual intelligibility works in most instances, but there are too many exceptions to the rule for it to be relied upon.
		For example, in China there are mutually unintelligible varieties that are referred to as dialects of a single language by the Chinese.
		The language varieties of certain communities along the German/Dutch border are mutually intelligible, yet on the German side the people speak a dialect of German and on the Dutch side they speak a dialect of Dutch.
	www-writing.berkeley.edu /TESL-EJ/ej18/f1.html (8304 words)

	Linguistics Colloquium
		Although used over a small geographic area, there are approximately 300 distinct dialects many of which are mutually unintelligible.
		The patterning of dialect differences often mirrors the settlement patterns of up to 3000 years ago.
		The linguistics and archeology of the South Pacific are often mutually supporting.
	www.sfu.ca /linguistics/events/colloquia/abs-Geraghty.htm (228 words)

	'Chinese' is not a language (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Within this group of languages, most experts (Yuan 1960, Zhan 1981, DeFrancis 1984, Ramsey 1987, Norman 1988) recognize 7 or 8 mutually unintelligible varieties which in any other context would be considered languages in their own right.
		The first point to be made is that each of these Chinese varieties is, as mentioned, completely unintelligible to speakers of other varieties.
		This unintelligibility is on the order of what is found between the different Romance languages of Europe, which should not be surprising, since both are spread over vast areas and both had their origins in splits from parent languages one and a half millennia ago or possibly even earlier.
	spp.pinyin.info /abstracts/spp062_chinese_language.html (452 words)

	Nabokov as Translator
		Because human beings speak many thousands of mutually unintelligible languages, translation of materials from the languages in which they were originally written into the languages of those who would like to use them but could not read the original language has been an inescapable necessity.
		But whenever anyone began work on a translation of literary works, in which style and structure are as important as content, a troubling question began to arise.
		On one side there are the literalists, who believe that the literal text is the only objective evidence of the work of literature which is available, and therefore a translation should strive to simply convey that text without seeking to interpret it for the reader any more than is absolutely necessary to make it intelligible.
	www.geocities.com /Athens/3682/nabokov2.html (1768 words)

	Japanese language and history by ALS International (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)
		Among these languages, Korean is most frequently compared to Japanese, as both languages share significant key features such as general structure, vowel harmony, lack of conjunctions, and the extensive use of honorific speech, in which the hierarchical rank of the listener heavily affects the discourse.
		However, pronunciation of Japanese is significantly different from Korean, and the languages are mutually unintelligible.
		Japanese also shares considerable similarities with the languages of the Ryukyu Islands, within which Okinawa is located, although the Ryukyu languages and Japanese are also mutually unintelligible.
	www.alsintl.com /languages/japanese.htm (1590 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)