Mutually Intelligible Languages

La inteligibilidad más trascendental es la del Español y el Portugués porque da lugar a un idioma entendido por 740 millones de personas que además crecen en 12 millones cada año. En 10-12 años Español+Portugués superan al Chino Mandarín,y a partir de ahí la supremacía del Español va a ser incontestable.

Por ejemplo,China solo concentra el 9-10% de todos los territorios habitables de la Tierra(en unas condiciones aceptables),pero además es que el Chino Mandarín solo abarca el 50-60% de esos territorios habitables,y encima esos territorios tienen unas condiciones de habitabilidad peores que las del Chino Cantonés o el Chino Wu porque éstos acaparan toda la costa sureste de China y relegan al Mandarín al interior de Clima mucho más extremo o continentalizado. Es decir, que el Mandarín se habla por ejemplo en Wuhan(sensación térmica de más de 45 grados centígrados durante 2-3 meses)y el Wu en Shanghai(Clima similar al de Atlanta,es decir,con sensación térmica de 40 grados durante 2 meses).

Dicho de otra manera,el Mandarín no se habla en la costa sureste,y esa costa concentra un crecimiento mayor que el de todo el interior,lo cual significa que el Mandarín solo está capitalizando el 40-50% del crecimiento económico de China, es decir,que solo 2 de los 4 billones de Dólares de la economía china se generan en territorio Mandarín. Ese territorio solo concentra el 5% de todas las regiones habitables del Mundo,pero Español+Portugués acaparan el 55% de las mismas(el Inglés como Lengua materna el 17%, el Francés el 4%, el Alemán el 2%,....etc.), a lo cual hay que añadir que la economía del Español+Portugués ya supera los 7 billones de Dólares frente a los 2 del Chino Mandarín(el Inglés 18 billones sin incluír los 63 millones de hispanos de EEUU), y por tanto es una broma comparar el Mandarín con el Español.

Repito,la inteligibilidad idiomática más trascendental y decisiva a la hora de alumbrar la nueva Lengua Franca es la del Español con el Portugués,que los expertos en Gramática cifran en un 89%. Es decir, que el Español se parece al Portugués en un 89% de su gramática; al Catalán en un 86%; al Italiano en un 82%; y al Francés en un 75%.

Joolsey:
>>In rural areas, the 'th'-v-'t' distinction is non-existant since that lisping 'theta' sound is not present in Gaeilic. ...<<

That's really interesting to connect that trait to Irish Gaelic. to be honest, I'd noticed what seemed to be an aspirated-sounding T in place of Theta in Irish accents (in Eire rather than Northern Ireland I think?), but I never noticed that this was unique to a theta substitution and not normal T. I'll try to find samples of English spoken by native speakers of other Gaelic dialects and see if similar traits are noticable. I will have to take advice if they're related to the sounds in their first langiage, though.


>>In terms of syntax, there is one famous example of the Gaeilic substratum and that is our tendency to replace the present perfect for recently completed actions with a form " be + AFTER + gerund" e.g. " I'm after going back to work on Monday " (I just got back to work this past Monday) which some American friends of mine understood to mean "What I'm going after, what I'm aiming for, is to return to work next Monday"<<

Fascinating! I'd never heard this in Irish speech. I have heard a lot more Welsh speech than Irish, however, and come to think of it I have a vague recollection of Welsh people having some unique expressions in English, which may be related to their original language. I'll try to remember them and look into it.

I guess the examples of Gaelic influence on English are still fairly few and far between, which may be a result of the wide difference between the two languages, inhibiting assimilation.

Repito,la inteligibilidad idiomática más trascendental y decisiva a la hora de alumbrar la nueva Lengua Franca es la del Español con el Portugués,que los expertos en Gramática cifran en un 89%. Es decir, que el Español se parece al Portugués en un 89% de su gramática; al Catalán en un 86%; al Italiano en un 82%; y al Francés en un 75%.


It is interesting how Spanish, despite being closer to French in terms of distance, is more similar to Italian than to French. Maybe this is due to the Roman heritage since Hispania and Italica were more deeply Romanized than Gaul.

Modern french derives from the north of france. Castellano sprung up from northern spain. In the part of france that stands between italy and spain, the original language was occitan, more similar to italian and spanish

<<It is interesting how Spanish, despite being closer to French in terms of distance, is more similar to Italian than to French. >>
Italian is more similar to French (89%),than to Spanish (82%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity

<<I guess the examples of Gaelic influence on English are still fairly few and far between, which may be a result of the wide difference between the two languages, inhibiting assimilation. >>

A few things have crossed over. The Amercian phrase "I don't have a red cent" (meaning to be broke) is a literal translation of "Nil leath phing rua agam" from the Irish, apologies for my Gaelige spelling.

>It's just simplified Dutch that has been standardized in that form under impulse of Boer-nationalism. <

Bullshit. By the time Afrikaans was being formalised (in the second half of the 19th century), it was already largely considered to be a seperate language by its speakers. Afrikaans is not simplified Dutch, but developed from Dutch, influenced by several other languages. Contrary to the belief fof many, (white) Afrikaners are not mainly of Dutch descent. According to one major study, a genetic mix for the average Afrikaner is: 35.5% Dutch, 34.4% German, 13.9% French, 7.2% African/Asian/Khoi, 2.6% British, 2.6% Other European, and 3.5% undetermined. The mix for so-called coloured Afrikaans speakers would look vastly different. It is obviously unlikely that such a group would generally be speaking standardized Dutch or even a simplified Dutch. The development of Afrikans was a natural development, not a political or nationalist "impulse". Admittedly, its eventual recognition had political and nationalistic overtones. It is still today increasingly developing away from Dutch.

The fact remains it's highly intelligible with Dutch and especially the written and formally spoken languages are. I know about the influence Afrikaans has undergone and the grammatical differences.
Very still I believe Afrikaans and Dutch should have more contact. I don't understand why Afrikaans is so much ignored in the Dutch-speaking world and probably vice versa, even though that is luckily slowly changing nowadays.
That Afrikaans speakers have access to Dutch literature and Dutch speakers have to Afrikaans, recognizing this fact is still an interesting thing to do in my opinion. Radically separating and isolating both languages is something that belongs to the classic view we till have about what defines a 'language'.

I believe Afrikaans and Dutch should be studied more in our respective countries.

People just fear less linguistic freedom and being bossed arround by Dutch-speaking, and that's why they're skeptic about this idea, well so I think at least. I still believe we should have better access to Afrikaans literature, because we have somewhat free access to it with our Dutch base.

Baldewin, Guy is not an Afrikaner.

Believe me. He just want the bonding of both communities to get ruined so that his language community can overcome both. It can be done if there's no cooperation between the Dutch and Afrikaners.

I am slovak and I can declare that SLOVAK and CZECH are absolutely mutually intelligible languages.When it comes to POLISH language it is harder to understand it for slovaks and czechs.

Slovak and Czech are like Serbian and Croatian.

<<The fact remains it's highly intelligible with Dutch and especially the written and formally spoken languages are.I know about the influence Afrikaans has undergone and the grammatical differences.
>>
Baldewijn, You are absolutely right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYB9s0Nyzk

"Slovak and Czech are like Serbian and Croatian."

Not at all, Serbian and Croatian are one language, Slovak and Czech, not really.

"Sorry, but Czech and Slovak are able to understand Polish and the other way around. Slavic languages are closer to each other than Spanish/Italian/Portuguese. In this case it would be very easy for Poles, Czech, and Slovaks to communicate with each other by just using their respective languages.

Czech and Slovaks can communicate with Serbo-Croatian speakers. If that is the case, then more so with Polish."

None of this is true. S-C even has a hard time with Macedonian and Slovenian, forget Czech.

Czech/Slovak and Polish intelligibility is probably less than 40%. Spanish and Portuguese probably understand each other better than Czech and Polish.

"there appear to be many different languages, that sound "half-and-half", persistant in regions where such mutually intelligible national languages have a geographical border; e.g. Catalan, Gallego."

Gallego is not not fully intelligible with Portuguese. Close, but no cigar. In fact, the differences are enough that people on the border communicate in Spanish, since Portuguese-Galician communication causes too many misundertandings.

"Galician and Spanish are mutually intelligible but not Portuguese -Spanish or Italian-Spanish."

The pure Galician is not that intelligible with Castillian. Spanish speakers can't even read it all that well. They only understand about 40% of it.

"Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to some degree, perhaps even more than Spanish and Portuguese."

Not true at all. Spanish-Portuguese are 54% intelligible. Spanish-Italian must be lower than that. Must be below 40%.

Franco, spanish is far from french because french people chose language d'oil instead of occitan to create french.
If occitan were chosen then french would be much closer to spanish than nowdays french.
Language d'oil is close to german, dutch, etc...
Occitan is close to italian, catala, spanish, etc..