In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without intentional study or special effort. It is sometimes used as a criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, though sociolinguistic factors are also important.
Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first. When it is relatively symmetric, it is characterized as 'mutual'. It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.
Read more about Mutual Intelligibility: Intelligibility, Mutually Intelligible Languages or Varieties of One Language, Asymmetric Intelligibility
Famous quotes containing the word mutual:
“What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”
—James Madison (1751–1836)