Can anyone please share their personal experiences with mutual intelligibility? or of someone you know? I would like to see just how common and feasible communication is between two related languages.
Share your personal experiences with mutual intelligibility
Portuguese speakers from Brazil have told me that they can understand Spanish.
I haven't heard it the other way around.
A Mexican and a French speaker told me that they could get the gist of each other's speech last night at a birhday party. However, I have sometimes had to help them because words like "jeudi" and "jueves" don't sound enough alike to them. Those are the words for Thursday, but you probably knew that.
Two Spanish speakers told me that they can understand Italian, I think.
Ukrainians can understand Russian and probably some Polish.
I can understand a lot of Catalan and I have never studied it.
I haven't heard it the other way around.
A Mexican and a French speaker told me that they could get the gist of each other's speech last night at a birhday party. However, I have sometimes had to help them because words like "jeudi" and "jueves" don't sound enough alike to them. Those are the words for Thursday, but you probably knew that.
Two Spanish speakers told me that they can understand Italian, I think.
Ukrainians can understand Russian and probably some Polish.
I can understand a lot of Catalan and I have never studied it.
I;m just wondering because you said you can understand Catalan but didn't say anything about Portuguese...
I am a native speaker of English, and yes, I understand Portuguese, but I have studied it a little.
Im a native speaker of English, I speak Spanish fluently for all practical purposes and I understand Portuguese quite well without ever having studied it.
I'm native speaker of Arabic and understand some other varieties of said language.
I think I could understand most of the basic Mandarin vocabulary if I never learnt this language, but it is impossible for me to know because, like English, it has been imposed on me, even though I'm supposed to be happy about this, since every native should know it, no matter how little.
Except Chinese stuff, I have dead ears to everything else. I don't enjoy the notorious advantage of understanding multiple "languages" without even learning them. I'm sorry to say Chinese stuff is rather dull Chinese languages only count as ONE language, and so the diligent Chinese student has to learn every language from scratch in order to claim to be multilingual. So, I'm only marginally bilingual.
Except Chinese stuff, I have dead ears to everything else. I don't enjoy the notorious advantage of understanding multiple "languages" without even learning them. I'm sorry to say Chinese stuff is rather dull Chinese languages only count as ONE language, and so the diligent Chinese student has to learn every language from scratch in order to claim to be multilingual. So, I'm only marginally bilingual.
I'm a native speaker to Spanish & I speka english fluently. I can read & understand Portugese & Italian, but I can under stand fairly well when Italian is spoken to me, but not as much with portugese. As for French I can get a grits of what is writen...
I'm a native speaker of English and my French is pretty good. I can understand a lot of written Spanish and a little bit of spoken.
Caveats: I did study Spanish at a couple different times, once for a few months and later for a school year, but both of the classes were pretty shallow. Also, I'm from California, so I kind of grew up around Spanish a bit though no one in my immediate family speaks it.
I don't have anywhere near the same degree of success with other Romance or Germanic languages that I do with Spanish.
I also heard from a fellow who speaks French and Provençal natively (and English non-natively but fairly well) that he understands spoken and written Spanish quite well in spite of never having studied it.
Caveats: I did study Spanish at a couple different times, once for a few months and later for a school year, but both of the classes were pretty shallow. Also, I'm from California, so I kind of grew up around Spanish a bit though no one in my immediate family speaks it.
I don't have anywhere near the same degree of success with other Romance or Germanic languages that I do with Spanish.
I also heard from a fellow who speaks French and Provençal natively (and English non-natively but fairly well) that he understands spoken and written Spanish quite well in spite of never having studied it.
I'm a native Spanish speaker and if I were to go to Portugal or Italy I'm sure I'd be able to communicate with them.
As a Native English & Spanish speaker I comprehend to great degree Portuguese, French and a bit of Romanian when its written. I've learned Italian on own behalf (intermediate level) and some Latin - which would probably explain why I understand - at times - some of the other languages mentioned above.
At the moment I'm learning Greek which has further expanded and helped me out in English and Spanish; likewise Latin. Last year I took
an Arabic class which really helped me understand the evolution of the Spanish 'arabic' word usage in it.
My 2cents regarding mutual intelligibility with other languages.
At the moment I'm learning Greek which has further expanded and helped me out in English and Spanish; likewise Latin. Last year I took
an Arabic class which really helped me understand the evolution of the Spanish 'arabic' word usage in it.
My 2cents regarding mutual intelligibility with other languages.
I'm a native English and Afrikaans speaker and I can understand Dutch when spoken slowly. Not everything, but perhaps about 60% - 70% when spoken and 80%+ when written.
"Mutual intellegibility" That one is interesting. While Romance speakers with little to no knowledge of English would certainely guess the meaning of this (these are two Romance words after all), it sure would sound odd to them.
Indeed, the common Romance counterparts of this would be "intercomprehension", "intercomprensió", "intercomprensione", "Intercomprensión", "intercomprension", etc. Those in turn wouldn't be so hard to guess for an English speakers. They do have the word "intercomprehension" in English after all. I'm guessing it must not be so common in daily usage though.
Indeed, the common Romance counterparts of this would be "intercomprehension", "intercomprensió", "intercomprensione", "Intercomprensión", "intercomprension", etc. Those in turn wouldn't be so hard to guess for an English speakers. They do have the word "intercomprehension" in English after all. I'm guessing it must not be so common in daily usage though.