Why some speakers can't understand speakers who understand them - Asymmetric Intelligibility

[@caiosiqueira6138]

I'm a portuguese native speaker and when I was a child I used to play a lot. The games, however, didn't have portuguese audio. So I used to play it in spanish because it was really easy to understand even though I have never studied spanish

[@franco2359]

Yes the same, I remember when I was a child and played Pokemon, but I didn't know how to speak English at that time, so I chose Spanish as the language of the game because it is closer to Portuguese (also my native language). I couldn't understand everything, but at least I could understand 70% of the information, if it were English I would understand nothing at that time

[@caiosiqueira6138]

@@franco2359 tu também é brasileiro?

[@franco2359]

@@caiosiqueira6138 eu sou 😆 só o nome que pode me ajudar a me disfarçar

[@Amghannam]

I speak French (and a very little bit of Spanish) and I live in Portugal now, if I read Portuguese, I can basically understand the general meaning of everything written. But when you guys speak, I understand nada.

[@isadorah4969]

Amei que todo mundo aqui fala português e fica falando em inglês kkkkkkk

[@Fadilanse]

this is the most educational comment section I've ever seen in my life

[@Geellun]

It’s lovely, isn’t it?

[@AndyZach]

Pretty normal for NativLang. Not all KZbin comment sections are obscene.

[@brunoseixascorrea]

Yeah, so cool!

[@blacklambcta4271]

Definitely cool

[@ericmoore6769]

No kidding. Us smart folx ain't alone after all !

[@matthewpennington9967]

I was sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam about 15 years ago, talking with a fellow American about how difficult it was to figure out if the conversations we heard were in English or Dutch. Right then, a big group sat down next to us, ordered beers and started talking quite loudly. After about five minutes, my friend and I decided that they had to be Dutch. We couldn’t understand a word, and the phonemes were Dutch-y. As we finally made up our mind that we shouldn’t be able to understand them, one of their beer glasses exploded, spilling beer over the table, and the lady closest to us leaned over and said, “that was unexpected, wasn’t it?!” Suddenly, it was like a switch had been flipped and I could understand every single word as they spoke in their surprisingly thick Essex accents. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had with language.

[@MartijnterHaar]

When I was in Los Angeles a lot of people thought I was English instead of Dutch. Which was flattering, but also surprising, because although I tend to stick closer to the RP that is taught in high school than most other Dutch people, who mix in more American cultural influences, no English person would ever mistake me for a native speaker.

[@MoveOnUpMusicEvan]

Yeah it’s like if you ever hear someone from Birmingham (the proper one in England) it’s pretty hard to understand them even though I’m from Leicester (also in the Midlands) so I assume it would be nye on impossible for an American to understand them first time hearing them

[@RobBCactive]

I worked in Switzerland, my German became fluent, Swiss people knew I wasn't German, Swiss or Austrian so they guessed Dutch. On the other hand last year after plenty of practice an Austrian German teacher was flabbergasted, when he found out I wasn't Swiss. Small accent differences are more noticeable the closer the speech is to your own. There's an online English teacher, who I detect slight tiny flaws in her RP, whereas her early childhood city accent sounds totally natural and perfect on her, so makes me feel she's more genuine in that. Yet, few people would find the regional dialect equally intelligble, unless they spoke it. Maybe the city folk would be disturbed by slight flaws due to speaking RP frequently for professional reasons.

[@kkech1]

Americans not understanding their own language, classic.

[@RobBCactive]

@@kkech1 it's not really that unusual, Americans often have little exposure to typical British English

[@jordanresendes4016]

I find a similar triangle happens where Portuguese speakers can easily understand Spanish, Spanish speakers can easily understand Italian, and Italian speakers can easily understand Portuguese. Never knew why this was the case where my portuguese and italian grandmothers would have quasi fluent conversations in their native languages without skipping a beat

[@asligaletto8196]

Italians actually understand more Spanish than Portuguese.

[@mattonellascheggiata9302]

I can't understand Portuguese at all. It's like russian to me. Even the writing is very difficult to me. I can understand pretty well Spanish, but only the writing. About listening, I can understand it if it is spoken slowly and without a thick accent, but I can do a conversation. About french... Ah, the pain. The writing is like super easy, I can understand everything, but the listening wtf, they just make sounds to me. Romanian is another level of unintelligible

[@SleepingTurtle1]

I find (European) Portuguese easier to read, but Italian easier to understand when spoken. Brazilian Portuguese I can understand written or spoken, but that's because my Spanish is Latin, and I'm more familiar with Brazilian Portuguese.

[@Flometis]

Portuguese-Italian communication is easier if the Italian speaker is from the South, were certain sounds are similar to the European Portuguese ones. When I was an Erasmus in Lisbon, my brother came to visit and he couldn't speak a single word of Portuguese, but he communicated easily with old people sitting at cafés thanks to his knowledge of a Southern Italian dialect. That would have been harder from someone coming from the North. Same for me: when I first got to Portugal, I had already taken classes for more than a year. The friend who was with me was waaay better than me at speaking, but he hardly understood the thick Portuguese accents. That was less of a problem for me.

[@rhythmicmusicswap4173]

Italian hardly can understand easily protguese, Spanish is, way easier for us, and sometimes French, especially for the North West Italian people, considering our dialect was influenced by the French

[@Eric-qe6xz]

You know what's weird? I speak Spanish and I can understand French, Italian, and Portuguese ~80 percent of the time when it's written, but I can't really help when it comes to listening.

[@susana3854]

Ive found this is because you expect them to pronounce them the spanish way - once i learnt the pronounciations for portuguese my brain started being able to see how it would be written down and then i could make the connections to spanish as if i were reading it. Its so cool!

[@charlessaintpe8574]

I took two years of Spanish in middle and high school. Later, while playing Assassin's Creed, I could understand Italian nearly as well as Spanish. I'm also okay with French, so I just assumed that if you could fluently read one of those languages, you could read all of them. Then I made a comment to that effect somewhere on the internet. I don't really remember the conversation because it was years ago, but I think I offended somebody with my incredulous reaction when they told me I was wrong.

[@nemoschmitz2374]

@@charlessaintpe8574 you were right to some degree. I mean the romance languages all share 75-89% of their vocabulary. That's a lot! And their grammar is extremely similar. Basically the conjugation of verbs have the same system, even if French and Italian have different endings. Portuguese and Spanish seem almost identical sometimes except that you switch ción and cão or n and m and some other minor things. I'm German but I speak Spanish quite well. And later I learned Italian, Portuguese, French and Catalan (I don't speak them all equally well) They're all so similar, it always just took me a couple of weeks at most to get to the point that I felt I could read the new language almost as well as Spanish. It's just that of you tell a Spanish or Portuguese speaker that their languages are very close they just often completely deny it and argue against it because 'they have so many weird words and I don't understand shit' and so on. They often don't really get that what I mean is that in the big picture, looking at all languages in the world, Portuguese and Spanish (and the other romance languages) are like twins with minor differences. And Indonesian or Chinese or Finnish in that metaphor would be some random person from a place far far away whom you've never met before. I'm convinced every native speaker of a romance language can easily learn to read any other romance language fairly well (notice: I'm not saying 'perfectly') within a Relative short time, of they really want to and do not constantly just focus on and complain about every minor difference he encounters

[@ZUB3RBR]

I speak Brazilian Portuguese and I can understand spoken Spanish very well, but it's a bit more difficult to understand Italian and French

[@FloweisPowerrr]

I don't speak neither of these languages but I can tell them apart pretty easily. But Swedish Norwegian and Danish all sound the same to me Latin languages are different smh

[@adamkotter6174]

I've made a game of this with my Portugese-speaking friends. I'll switch into Spanish, they'll speak Portuguese, and we'll see how long we can talk before having to switch back into English.

[@rowynnecrowley1689]

One of my favorite things is to converse with someone who doesn't speak my language and vice versa, and find that we understand each other anyway, based on a handful of similarities to other languages we each speak.

[@andreesapissarra]

How many times have you given up then?

[@ajmartinez1470]

Portuguese speakers usually have an easier time understanding Spanish than Spanish speakers do hearing Portuguese

[@rusedgin]

In the end, before English, you just resort to portunhol right?

[@luizalima8329]

@@rowynnecrowley1689 yeh, well, I’ve made the mistake once in Italy of ordering "leche" (what I thought was milk, as in spanish) only to be surprised with a full cup of whipped cream. I won’t make that mistake again ahaha

[@jg8711]

I'm a Norwegian who often travels to the Roskilde music festival in Denmark. One particular heavy morning I was sleeping off last nights fun when a girl came over and "knocked" on my tent. She kindly asked if I could move my tent a little so she could fit hers in. She was Swedish, and asked in her native tongue. I responded in Norwegian and said something like " yeah sure, just give me 10 minutes, I'm a bit hungover". She responded in English saying " I'm sorry I don't understand Danish". I told here she had to wait 30 minutes.

[@robinviden9148]

I think I'm dying from laughter here... What's your dialect (because that could've something to do with the linguistic misidentification)?

[@jg8711]

@@robinviden9148 I'm from Oslo! :) So I pretty much have the easiest dialect for swedes to understand.

[@theangryaustralian7624]

Thanks for sharing this made me laugh

[@Deathfrenz011]

@@jg8711 That might be the issue right ther! :) I had a Norwegian friend (I'm Danish) and we would sometimes speak to eachother in our native tongue. He could understand me perfectly, but I could only understand him when he spoke Oslo dialect instead of the one from his hometown. He explained to me that Oslo dialect was "Danish with a Norwegian hat on and not actually Norwegian language". Was quite funny

[@jg8711]

@@Deathfrenz011 Jepp that is the short way of describing the Oslo dialect. But I feel I need to point out that a lot have happened in the last 200 years. So it's not the same. But close enough to be understood.

[@ErklaerMirDieWelt]

When I was in language school in Spain, a classmate of mine was Italian. He used to turn up to class completely disheveled and sometimes still drunk from the night before and often fell asleep in the last row. Turns out, you can apparently get extra vacation days in Italy if you use them for educational purposes. So he booked a language course for Spanish where he pretty much understood everything from the get go and spent the three weeks partying and sleeping on the beach. Still aced the final exam though.

[@felicepompa1702]

Even normally us italians have around 4 months of vacation each school year, 3 in the summer and the rest is spent mostly in festivities like christmas, easter and more

[@molimolinana]

@@felicepompa1702 that's about the same in Spain then

[@Pollicina_db]

@@felicepompa1702 È stesso in Croazia, non capisco come gli stranieri possono avere così poco giorni per la vacanza e altre cose. Quando la facoltà inizia dopo tre mesi sono già molto stanca lol.

[@camelopardalis84]

@@Pollicina_db I hate that after learning Italian for about eight weeks twenty years ago and learning French for about eight years mostly before that, I understand about 80% of what you've written in Italian as I would had you written it in French.

[@edmerc92]

@@camelopardalis84 Learning French probably helped you with Italian though, they're structurally very similar.

[@leotheviking9796]

And Icelandic people can understand all three languages! No one understands us though. How bout that..

[@seethrough_treeshrew]

Jag har länge velat tala med en islänning bara för att se om jag förstår

[@Naeromusic]

true af

[@sawyer3715]

Jeg snakker norsk og man kan forstå litt islandsk.

[@emilbecker8970]

Vi kan forstå islandsk lit

[@Chrinik]

Nobody understands icelanders...

[@DZrache]

I'm English, and when I went to Germany (knowing no German) some Germans found it easier to understand me if I spoke in an American accent

[@klaseniusproductions7591]

probably because of american tv/movies/songs

[@googane7755]

Americans generally speak English more clearer than say other strong accents like scottish or irish + exposure helps too.

[@mats7492]

as a german, understanding the english is sometimes hard indeed. its already quite difficult in south london, dont get me started on the scouse and geordies... almost impossible..

[@DawnchaserTheAdventurer]

which american accent? Were you emulating the Californian or Pacific Northwest Accent? Or going more Joe Pesci with a New Yorker accent? cause when the Georgian government was/is hiring volunteer English teachers, like, 80% of the Americans in my volunteer group were from the west coast, cause we have milder regional accents than the heavy southern and Nor'east accents

[@notdaveschannel9843]

@@mats7492 Did you mention south London as specifically more difficult than other parts of London or just because you happen to live there? I'm curious because I lived in London for years and never got an ear for any specific differences in accent between different parts.

[@pooskyfilms547]

When I had my first job as a cart pusher at a store, one of my coworkers was an Argentinian man who didn't speak English. I am from Italy, and for some reason, the way he spoke Spanish just clicked. I could help him communicate with everyone else, even though he couldn't understand me when I spoke Italian. It was a really interesting episode that stuck with me. Thanks for making this video to clear up the phenomenon

[@valentinocozzi]

Si, allora l'italiano serve a qualcosa!!! WOW!!

[@pocketlanguages]

If I am not mistaken, Argentinan Spanish is strongly influenced by Italien settlers.

[@pooskyfilms547]

Yes it is! They have very similar cadences and accents. It inspired me to learn Spanish, which I am fluent in now.

[@MrBraveheart1191]

Sonja Bojelin Absolutely, this is so notorious even on Argentinian Spanish accent, it is much closer to Italian than to Spanish from Spain

[@vincelamb4063]

The Italian influence is strong enough that the Argentinians I know don't say "Adios" or "Hasta la vista" to say goodbye, they say "Ciao."

[@momouwu1937]

My parents grew up in a rural area of Guangzhou and I grew up speaking rural Cantonese. Whenever I hear Thai or Vietnamese, I feel like I'm listening to rural Cantonese except that it's gibberish

[@thisisjeffwong]

I think there are more Sino-Korean words that are similar to Cantonese than Sino-Vietnamese words that sound like Cantonese. The Vietnamese really took the nasal sounds and ran with it though. Wish I could understand.

[@japanpanda2179]

Isn't there a theory that relatives of the Thais and Laos, at the time called the Yue people, were the ones in South China before China owned it?

[@JackLuong]

@@japanpanda2179 It was Vietnam. Yue = Viet

[@japanpanda2179]

@@JackLuong Just because the Viets were named after the Yue doesn't mean they're the same. The main non-Chinese people that live in South China now are Zhuang, related to Thai-Lao.

[@MeMe-tw4xb]

I’m Vietnamese and I feel the exact same about Cantonese and Thai LOL 😂 it always sound like very specific Vietnamese accents (not the city one I grew up hearing) but gibberish lol

[@Devantejah]

We all speak the same language in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Except the norwegians can't spell it and the danes can't pronounce it.

[@Wiiezner]

Du er da en fjollet type, Hva? ;)

[@andreeadobre3190]

Looool 😂

[@adelheidbreidvik]

Well, the Norwegian thing is deffenetly true, we can’t even agree with each other how to spell basic words. Like why do we, a contry of only 5.3 million people need to ways of writting??????

[@mavmav0YT]

loveley because some of us want to write proper Norwegian (nynorsk) and some of us want to write danish (bokmål)

[@angeljamais8541]

ROTFLMAO!!!

[@wallachia4797]

As a Romanian, this is so relatable. We can understand other romance-language speakers but they don't understand us ;(((

[@wallachia4797]

​@@ericolens3 In Romanian we have Bună, Bună Ziua or Salut for "Hello". Romanian vocabulary is only 15% Slavic and this influence is mainly only seen in religious vocabulary (as Bulgarians Christianized us and Romania is a very Christian country). In some respects, Romanian stuck closer to its latin roots than the western languages, for example, Romanian retaining its 6th case from Latin while if I am not wrong, everyone else lost it. There are also a lot of Romanian words which may seem foreign to you but that is simply because they've evolved differently, not because they are of non-latin origin. For example, we have the word "Lume" which means "world", it comes from Latin "lumen", which meant "Light", in time it came to evolve into meaning "everything under the light/sun", therefore "world". Or our word for "country", which is "Țară", it evolved from Latin "Terra", which meant "Land". "Depart" in French means "leaving", in Romanian "Departe" means "far away", they both share the same root. "Avanti" in Italian means to run or to charge, in Romanian "Avânt" means to prepare your momentum, to get ready. Again, in a language like Italian, the word "citta" means "city", but in Romanian the root evolved into "cetate", meaning "stronghold" or any sort of walled settlement which can defend itself, this was because the latinised population in modern Romania survived almost a thousand years of invasions (Huns, Gepids, Slavs, Magyars) through isolation in the Carpathian mountain range where "cities" were not viable for surviving, but "strongholds" were. Romanian was separated from the other Western languages for over one thousand years, time in which many root words from Latin changed meaning but the origins remain the same even if they dont't seem familiar to you, a Spaniard at first. Romania is just a part of the Eastern Romance languages, and it just so happens that Romanian is the only major language in this branch left. There used to be Dalmatian and others. Dalmatian used to be a sort of in between Romanian and Italian, you can check its vocabulary on Wikipedia. Comparing Romanian to Spanish is like comparing German to Swedish, they are different because they are part of different BRANCHES, not different language families. I hope this cleared it up for you, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

[@prosquatter]

@@ericolens3 French is more of a bastard child than Romanian as they have more Germanic origin words than Romanian has Slavic, but people are more used to French and the Germanic words in French are also familiar to them from English.

[@590dami]

@@ericolens3 italian bounciness is very clear, you can easely tell if you hear rioplatense spanish, both argentina and uruguay. there's a "singing" voice there for sure

[@jellyfish0311]

@@590dami che

[@gwendolynsheperd9011]

My latin teacher (romanian) father spoke with her father in law (father of the math teacher, french) in latin bc it was easier for them haha

[@helpahoe920]

My mum who is czech speaks to polish people in Czech and they respond and polish and they have full blown conversation and understand each other perfectly

[@Leviwosc]

My mother in law is Slovakian and she speaks and understands Czech perfectly. She also speaks Hungarian and Russian fluently. But she gets immensely confused by Polish. She says that the Poles turn everything around. Southern Slavic languages are even more of a challenge for her. Does your mum understand Slovakian? And do you know whether she can easily understand Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Slovenian?

[@helpahoe920]

Leviwosc she understands slovakian and hasnt tried to talk to anyone in any of the other languages but she says because she grew up in czechoslovakia she was around people who spoke slovakian a lot so that would make it easier for her to understand

[@zuzannas3985]

I once tried to understan slovakian and it turned total gibberish for me (a polish person), but the other way around was different, I spoke polish and the guy understood perfectly. He ended up responding in english to my polish, that must have sounded very funny for bypassers

[@demkoolya]

Im Ukrainian and can speak both Russian and Ukrainian fluently. I find that Polish is similar in many ways orally to Ukrainian, as is Belarusian. Slovakian and Czech to me sounds like a mixture of both russian and ukrainian, so I can somehow discern what all these people would say to me. But I think Russian speakers find it incredibly difficult to understand most other Eastern European languages. The Baltics are a whole other story though...

[@Acirnie]

@@Leviwosc I can't speak for his mum, but as a Czech I can tell you that a big majority of Czech people will have no problems having a fluent conversation with Slovaks. These languages are just really close. Although it is true that it works better for Slovaks as some of the younger Czech generations have slight problems understanding Slovak language. Also I might add that when I was in Slovenia, I could understand a lot of Slovenian language thanks to the similarity between Slovak and Slovenian, but they had no idea what I said when I spoke Czech.

[@KingAenti]

Oh cool, as a swiss-german I know this well, every swiss-german understands german but barely any german understands swiss-german.

[@gregor-samsa]

that's true except for about 5 Million people living in Baden (Western part and Baden-Wuerttemberg the Bundesland in the southern to the west of bavaria) in the border to France. The problem with Swizz German is - it us almost never written down.

[@JenniferKGraf]

Tut mir ja auch leid😭 wenn ich mir Videos angucke frag ich mich immer warum man für alles andere Wörter braucht🤣 und überall ein -le ranhängt! (Bitte mit Humor nehmen!)

[@ak5659]

My cousin lived in Vienna for about 20 years before transferring to Switzerland. When she arrived she called her boss to complain, "You told me you were tranferring me to a German speaking area! There's no German here!"

[@naem1728]

English: “Copenhagen” Swedish:“Chopemhagn” Danish:“Ghhhhaaunuummm”

[@Eclipse-mf6hc]

Reading: København Saying it: Kopenhawen Did you hear about the guys who were selling fake chickens on the black market? I heard they’re making a kylling

[@sahilpatel0701]

Naem17 in Swedish it’s actually Köpenhamn (shœ-pen-hamn)

[@dinamosflams]

I CAN'T LMAO

[@FishingForLife28]

Its our city, we'll call it what we want 😂

[@lukefiras8735]

@@Eclipse-mf6hc You mean a kyllingsuppe 😂😂😂

[@TheHappyBookwyrm]

A friend of mine was lost in Italy once. She is a native speaker of English and had had no expereince speaking Italian. Another woman from the same tour was lost along side her who was a native speaker of Italian with no expereince speaking English. Both my friend and this woman had studied classical Latin, though, and they got by on that!

[@Ahonya666]

TheHappyBookwyrm that is so cool

[@taintedmyth0s636]

That reminds me of the book Shogun. There's an English sailor who talks to a Japanese samurai woman in Portuguese, then later on Latin.

[@Kyoptic]

Now this is beautiful language nerd-dom.

[@treborsaldivar518]

i don't believe this.

[@lolaopal8884]

There is a story of this happening between queen Elizabeth 1 of England and grace o malley the Irish pirate. Elizabeth could only speak English and grace could only speak irish

[@smez]

We were four Swedes (from the north of Sweden) sharing an apartment with a girl from Denmark. None of us Swedes could understand her without her speaking very slowly and repeating things over and over again, but she understood us perfectly. After a few days she just started to talk to us in English instead while we kept speaking Swedish - it worked out great, but it was pretty strange when you think about it 😂

[@yehudacavalli3927]

Probably because you guys were from the North, right? People in Skåne might have less of a hard time, because they're dialect is already very similar to Danish in the way it sounds, and also because they might be more exposed to Danes speaking, especially people in Malmö that can go back and forth easily through the Øresund bridge.

[@smez]

@@yehudacavalli3927 yeah, Skåne is basically Denmark for us ;)

[@yehudacavalli3927]

LOL right!

[@petitio_principii]

Wow, I'd guess it would be more likely that she would speak some Swedishized Danish hybrid. I've watched once some Scandinavian movie or series (with English subtitles) where the characters' dialog even suggested these asymmetries can cause some sort of racist-like prejudice, with people from one country regarding the other as dumber.

[@smez]

@@petitio_principiithat's pretty much what we were trying at first, but we still had big problems understanding her so English was much easier. Haha yeah, maybe we are a bit dumber, since she could understand us without any problems 😅 But I think that Swedes are generally easier to understand for Danes than the other way around, as we tend to speak more like words are written (depending on the dialect, of course) while the Danes use more diphthongs and don't separate words as clearly but have more of a "flow" when speaking (written Danish is much easier to understand than spoken Danish for a Swede). And, as someone said earlier, a Swede from the south would probably have a much easier time understanding Danish than we had as well, as their dialects are more similar to Danish while ours is very different.

[@ikkylovesbass]

An old boss had a rather cute story on a similar note. She was born in Pakistan to an Urdu speaking family, but moved to Australia as a toddler, so spoke Urdu at home, but learnt to speak English with an Australian accent. She used to also lecture at a local university as a side gig, and had some students who were from India and spoke Hindi which is mutually intelligible with Urdu. They assumed because of her Australian accent she was monolingual, and would commentate on her classes to one another. On the last day of semester, one said to the other "how are you?" in Hindi and she replied "I am well thanks" in Urdu. She said their reaction was hilarious.

[@alyssamiles2909]

A number of years ago my mom and I went on a vacation to Cancun Mexico. When we were there we decided to eat at McDonald's. While standing in line we watched the order in front of us. The person behind the counter was a Mexican of course, and the customer was Australian. Both spoke fluent English, however, we watched with no small amount of humor as they struggled to communicate. The Mexican speaking fluent English could not understand the Australians accent. The biggest sticking point was a bottled water. To the Mexican, "bah-towed wah-uh" was unintelligible. Eventually my mom offered to translate because they could both understand her perfectly and she, them. Imagine it, two fluent English speakers at a complete impass without help from a third English speaker.

[@richardemms3050]

I have noticed the way some countries teach English is biased to a certain accent, usually to American. In Korea I noticed in coffee shops the word for 'hot' in hot coffee was 'hat' with a soft t in hangul, used as a loan word as Korean has a perfectly good word for hot. I tried ordering but in my British accent the word 'hot' meant nothing to them. Trying again with an American accent and they understood. I think in your example the Mexican server was very used to serving Americans all day and they probably didn't sound like they were speaking English, but 'McDonalds menu English', then this Australian came along and wanted something using a different term or pronunciation.

[@alyssamiles2909]

@Richard Emms Perhaps. It seemed that the majority of the tourists there were American. However, the Mexican girl behind the counter appeared to have a very good command of English. I'm sure if she had dealt with Australians frequently, there likely wouldn't have been any problem.

[@dennisglorie9503]

I'm a first generation Australian and English is my first language but I have trouble understanding a lot of the "aussie" Australians.

[@alyssamiles2909]

@@dennisglorie9503 is there alot of variation in the Australian accent?

[@dennisglorie9503]

There is quite a spectrum because Australia has so many different people living together. The 'typical' aussie accent is very high pitched, nasal and spoken very quickly with a lot of confusing slang, however in the cities it is less often heard. I used to work in the hotel industry and would have no issues talking to people with broken english from other countries but had a hard time trying to explain basic things to people visiting from regional areas. I've also had a few times both at home and abroad where I've ordered 'a cup of tea' and been given a cappuccino, which then results in conversation about when I emigrated from South Africa (despite having no connection to the country). I think there are some interesting videos on the accent types of Australia floating around on youtube. I'll go find some.

[@ccheyenne]

I'm from Spain and I've had these experiences in both Italy and Portugal. As far as I can tell, Portuguese people understand pretty much everything we say, but we have a much harder time understanding them. We would ask people if they spoke Spanish and the answer was always "no, but speak" and communication was very fluid. For me, if I can hear Portuguese and read the words at the same time, it suddenly becomes much easier than only listening or reading separately. Plus one time I was sitting next to a Portuguese kid in a ski lift and we started chatting in Spanish, and I was super impressed with his Spanish. And he said "I don't know any Spanish, I'm just speaking Portuguese but imitating what a Spanish accent sounds like to me". That was pretty amazing. Then in Italy it's the other way around; my first time there I was surprised that I could understand pretty much all basic tourist interactions, ie, prices, directions, explanations about menu items, but it was a lot harder than I expected for them to understand us. I've heard many people say that there's a rough "distance to Rome" gradient with Romance languages (though French is the odd one out that doesn't work because of all the Germanic influences) which basically says that it's easier to understand towards Rome than away from Rome, which is consistent with my experience. I'd like to test it with Romanian as well; there are in fact a lot of Romanians who come to Spain to work because of the language similarity. Within Spain we have 4 official languages, 3 of which are Romance languages (Catalan, Galician and Castillian, the latter is what the rest of the world calls "Spanish") and all three are mutually intelligible for basic interactions. (The fourth one, Basque or Euskera as it's said in Basque, isn't even Indo-European, so it's basically a nightmare to learn).

[@arx3516]

Catalan is far easier for italians to understand than Castillan, i remeber travelling to Barcelona with some friends, i was the only one who spoke a little of Catillan, but in the end my help wasn't needed since they had no problem with Catalan, wich to them sounded like a funny dialect! XD

[@QoraxAudio]

Catalan is best ofcourse!

[@Leto85]

'(...) speaking Portuguese but imitating what a Spanish accent sounds like to me.' That really is amazing! Especially considering the fact he was talking to you, being from Spain.

[@BabaBugman]

With french, you can understand spanish and italian easily, but it is harder for spaniards to do reverse.

[@Leto85]

@@BabaBugman That makes sense to me. With that little bit of Spanish that I speak I can hardly even read French, though Italian goes better.

[@MePeterNicholls]

I find US tv puts subtitles on any speaker with a slightly foreign accent

[@clickrick]

You mean like anything imported from the UK? ;-)

[@BigDogCountry]

You're making the assumption that people in the US can read.

[@sammig.8286]

Actually, US TV is the one making the assumption that Americans can read, which is a pretty good assumption considering that most can.

[@stevenrichards1539]

When I first started watching a lot of British television shows I needed to use the subtitles, but 20 years later I am good.

[@fractalez]

@@sammig.8286 it's just a joke tho

[@beastkotathix6662]

When I went to Berlin, sometimes I forgot I'm meant to speak German and often replied in Luxembourgish, and the people there were always super confused and it took me a while to realise. Along the German-Lux border, Germans here are so used to Luxembourgish that often conversations are held in German and in Lux at the same time with no problems understanding one another, yet when I go to Berlin I always somehow forget that's not how it works :D

[@LuJoTu]

Every once in a while I'll happen upon some Luxembourgish, and the same thing happens every time: "I got almost none of that. Is my German broken? Have I been stuck in America too long? What is that accent?" Then..."ohhhhh. Phew."

[@ellianaellrow]

When I was around 12/14, my sister and I met some children from Luxemburg (who had one English parent) while camping in France. We as Germans understood them quite well, but they couldn't understand us, maybe due to our bavarian-swabian dialect, so we spoke broken English mixed with German and they replied mostly in Luxemburgish and sometimes English, if we didn't get it. Found that super interesting

[@2112jonr]

@@ellianaellrow Fun fact: Many AI based German transcription tools cope well with German speakers until they have to deal with the Bavarian dialect. Had numerous problems with exactly that at a previous employer.

[@kucam12mischablue]

I am Romanian and for the most part of my trip in Portugal I had the impression that people were speaking in my Moldovan accent but that I could not understand all the words they were saying. When in Italy I could understand everybody but nobody could understand me speaking Romanian. Same in Spain. But Portugal was the one that stayed with me the most. Romanian has a lot of words in common with Portuguese as well, and we pronounce them in the exact same way in N-E Romania. “Cu un kilogram de carne și un litru de vin nu se moare de foame “ is the phrase that is 100% Portuguese and Romanian. Thank you for all your beautiful work.

[@Fenditokesdialect]

Yeah but the rest of us Romance speakers can't tell what how you use all those words together cause Romanian has a case system and strap-on articles that the others don't use. To us it just sounds like a string of recognisable words but with no way of knowing how those words are put together into an understandable sentence.

for me, as a brazilian, i can understand some romanian when written, but when spoken it’s quite difficult to get the words or the context

[@dstrdm]

Well I'm Mexican so I speak Spanish, “Cu un kilogram de carne și un litru de vin nu se moare de foame “ means With a kilogram of meat and a liter of wine you don't starve :-)

[@kucam12mischablue]

@@dstrdm latin brothers from the two extremities of the empire

[@kucam12mischablue]

@@Fenditokesdialect that is because we have been heavily influenced by the slavic sea that surrounds us

[@rebekahhaas2387]

I work in a college department that's filled with international students. The French, Spanish, and Italian students hang out and speak some sort of transit language that's mostly cognates and English (though none of them speak English natively). It's super cool to listen to.

[@beybladeguru101]

Might be interesting to research it.

[@chrisashtonlightell-west1189]

What I wouldn't give to hear that

[@ak5659]

Check out the interlanguage called Interlingua. It's a complete language constructed from the common elements of the Romance languages. There're similar ones for the Germanic and Slavic languages, Folkspraak and Iinterslavic, respectively.

[@beybladeguru101]

@@ak5659 From what I understand, Interlingua is a pretty mediocre conlang. Interslavic, on the other hand, what really interesting to listen to as a Russian speaker; It's quite remarkable, actually.

[@ingridfong-daley5899]

Def look up the concept of 'interlanguage'. I've seen the exact mix that you're talking about, and it's both fascinating and relatively common. It's awesome that you have such opportunities to explore!

[@isahere7015]

I’m from Australia, and when I went to the U.S, there was a shopkeeper in a scent store, and I remember she told me I have a ‘lovely accent’ and that she’s ‘always wanted to go to Europe’ after I told her I was from Australia. She then proceeds to ask me how I knew how to communicate in English... I was so confused? I said ‘English is the main language over there’, and then she replied ‘Oh... I’m sorry’. We didn’t talk much after that, but I still made a purchase of soap that day in the store. 😂 I learnt from that moment onwards that what you think someone may know, is not exactly what they may actually know. But pretty much every other American I encountered knew where Australia was and that we speak English

[@TheRealSpeedWolf]

I'm pretty sure she confuse you with Austria, I was talking with my Austrian friend but I click by accident the auto-correct and it type Australia when I meant to type Austria, he wasn't very pleased.

[@isahere7015]

SpeedWolf, I actually didn’t think until you brought it up! Thank you. I kind of feel closure knowing that in a weird way now, lol

[@MACRStratum]

@@TheRealSpeedWolf Austria, eh? Put another shrimp on the barby, mate!

[@GUITARTIME2024]

She thought Austria.

[@TheRealSpeedWolf]

@@isahere7015 haha, NP

[@PinkGrapefruit22]

When I was an English teacher in Japan, there were several students in my schools who had immigrated from Brazil, and we would often chat with each other in between classes, them in Portuguese and me in Spanish, because we could communicate more easily that way than in either English or Japanese.

[@monhi64]

God damn you speak (at least?) English, Spanish and Japanese. That is a tough ass combo with probably 0% intelligibility between any two

[@taldru6]

Literally all of the Slavic languages have some form of asymmetric intelligibility

[@marekmichalovic8711]

You should look up Medžuslovjansky/Interslavic - it takes advantage of this and creates an even more intelligible language

[@VeggiePopper]

Same with Romance languages. We Spanish speaking people can understand Italian and Portuguese. But Italians and Portuguese are not as mutually intelligible between each other.

[@ppaaccoojrf]

@RFT Except what he said is true. Portuguese speakers have an easier time with Spanish than the other way around because of phonology, yes, but Spanish speakers tend to have an easier time with Italian than Portuguese speakers do. Probably because of the cadence of the languages, or perhaps due to linguistic distance. Check out three way language exchanges and you'll usually see Spanish speakers being some sort of interpreters between the other two languages.

[@juststeve5542]

@daniiel mlinarics that's the divide between the Northern and Southern Slavic language branches. Czech, Slovak, Polish and Russian are all Northern, the rest of you are Southern Branch, but there are still some similarities, especially in the basics. I speak a tiny bit of Polish, and several years ago was watching the Eurovision song contest on TV with a load of friends (drinking games!) which was being held in Belgrade. They did the usual 10,9,8 countdown... By this point I realised I recognised the numbers and joined in with the rest of the countdown! To this day my friends think I can randomly speak Serbian!

[@juststeve5542]

@daniiel mlinarics your English spelling isn't an issue - I have to endure Americans ;-) OK, next challenge, try communicating with your neighbours to the North ;-) No, not Slovenia, the other one! :-D Sok szerencsét!

[@geeache1891]

Asymetric intelligebility: people from Liverpool think they speak english.

[@kawaiidere1023]

Symmetrical intelligibility: nobody speaks English correctly

[@Deme_Diora666]

@@kawaiidere1023 except for the British 💀💀

[@thekathal]

@@Deme_Diora666 funnily enough, it’s theorised that the standard american accent (the generic one) is actually the most historically accurate way of speaking english, if you take out any slang

[@Deme_Diora666]

@@thekathal yeah, I’ve heard that before too, however since British is the language founded in Britain, when the British public speaking standard changes so does the standard overall, the way we used to speak is the way southern Americans sound now well closest too, but that’s not the way British people sound now and so it’s not the standard.

[@thekathal]

@@Deme_Diora666 yeah, I suppose as a British person I should’ve known as much lol

[@malleusmaleficarum6004]

I'm Polish and when I hear someone speaking Russian, it sounds like I'm listening to a Polish person that has sustained some sort of a traumatic brain injury.

[@jodinha4225]

Malleus Maleficarum that’s basically correct

[@agnesstrzykowska4300]

Oh, really? Czech people have great fun listening to Polish, Poles make jokes about the Czech language, Slovak and Polish are often confused, the Czech and the Slovak sometimes have hard times to understand each other despite the history of belonging to Czechoslovakia for many years, Russian had been taught in schools in all communistic countries, so most of the Chech, the Slovaks and the Poles can communicate with one another...at least the intelligent ones.

[@Pilum1000]

I'am Russian and when i listen you (personally), your sounds like as a parrot which was choked a hot potato... and and convulsively trying to get rid of it...

[@malleusmaleficarum6004]

@@Pilum1000 That sounds like a problem(a personal one), maybe you should talk to your doctor about that the next time you see him, because I could not care less.

[@Pilum1000]

@@malleusmaleficarum6004 You could not care less because you drunk neuroleptics regularity.

[@sheiladelarosa_]

I recall a time when I, a spanish speaker, had a lovely conversation with a portuguese man and an italian woman in a plane. Both the portuguese and I could understand each other perfectly, and while the italian lady struggled sometimes, she had an enjoyable time too! It's amazing how things like these happen!

[@jnewcomb]

I had a very eclectic experience taking classes in Los Angeles. There were 15 students in my class, 10 of us were born in the US, 2 in India, 1 in Brazil, 1 in Venezuela and 1 in Germany. Conversation was ALWAYS interesting between us. Here's how it laid out. 2 of the USers were from Washington, D.C. and grew up in black neighborhoods. They could talk in a way we all just smiled cause they were having such a good time not being understood by the rest of us. However, the native New Yorker was able to get in on the jokes some of the time. I grew up in Minnesota and a student I made fast friends with early on was born in Ohio. We got along great. We were also the only two who could understand the guy from Alabama. His accent was thick like fudge. However, put him on the phone? Not a clue what the hell he was saying 90% of the time. But for some reason our third midwesterner, from Michigan, was confused by not only the Alabaman but myself and my Ohioan friend sometimes. Not sure why. The rest were California born, raised and studying and had NO clue what most of us were talking about sometimes. Just asking them for a pop (soda) would make their heads explode and the rest of us laugh. And it got even MORE interesting when you added the internationals. The German, thankfully, was fluent in English but predominately stuck with the Californians as it was the most comprehensible version of English he understood. The Venezuelan and the Brazilian would ALWAYS talk to each other in their native language which was fascinating to watch because Spanish is spoken in Venezuela and Portuguese in Brazil. Neither one spoke the other's language. I understand from speaking to them after watching this marvelous dance of the native tongue that the Venezuelan had better luck understanding the Brazilian overall but if the Venezuelan was having difficulty being understood by the Brazilian, she would use synonyms until they found a word that was similar enough in Portuguese so that the Spanish speaker could continue. Lost yet? Cause there's more. The Californians actually did okay with the Venezuelan's Spanish though only one of them could speak Spanish back. BUT the Californian who spoke Spanish was taught by her mother who was born in Colombia and so there were regional variances that had to be overcome. I could understand the German sometimes but could only respond in English because there is a large population of German speakers where I grew up plus my Father and Brother both speak it quite well but I was never formally taught. Finally, the pièce de résistance, the Indians were the most perplexing of all. One grew up in rural India, the other in a prominent family in New Delhi. He could speak Hindi, his tribal language and was only moderately comfortable with English when he arrived (don't worry, he got much better as time wore on). She could speak English but knew only four phrases in Hindi. Hello. Good bye. Thank you. Yes/No. That was it. I literally knew more Hindi than she did cause I was obsessed with Bollywood movies at the time. To make the He feel more comfortable and confident in the group, in our off time, He and I would sing our favorite Bollywood songs back and forth. I didn't know word for word what they meant but I at least knew the gist. She, like the German, was more likely to understand the Californians than the rest of the English speakers but oddly enough, by the end of the course, the She, the Venezuelan and the Portuguese were an inseparable group and none of us had any clue what they were speaking by the end of the year. Best class EVER!

[@kanyewest9165]

You can make a religion outta this

[@killuastark1414]

Thanks for that haha

[@JazzyCrumbles]

South American languages ended up being slightly more similar because of the massive native American language groups here, the closeness of spanish and Portuguese, and the influence of Yoruba and other similar African language groups that mixed in. It's a party down here haha

[@omara.ramirezsosa7393]

Beautiful story! thanks for sharing

[@weremattc00lK1d]

Not just languages but dialects play a big part in the whole understanding. I'm from North West England, a few years back my Dad went to New York and while there he tried getting some maccies. The woman at the till couldn't understand a word he was saying, like he was speaking a different language. Took him four attempts of saying "Big mac and coke, please" for her to work it out

[@Artur_M.]

From experience I can say that having a broad vocabulary in your own language (knowing many synonyms and rarely used forms, especially archaic) helps understanding closely related languages.

[@FOLIPE]

Artur M. I agree with that. Also, knowing secondary less common senses of words, that helps too.

[@chrisyt402]

Brālis no Lietuvas? :D

[@MrCrashDavi]

this

[@ploosqva]

Yes! Also, etymology. It should be taught where words come from. This way it's sometimes easier to understand in foreign context

[@JohnJohnson-ox3uc]

Etymology used to be taught as part of English, reading, and spelling. I don't really see signs of it in any of my kids' homework.

[@_audun]

As a Norwegian, every time I go to Denmark I'll just get really drunk and it actually works!

[@mvl71]

I understand so many things when I'm really drunk. Or at least I _think_ I understand. Probably. I think. Not sure, can't remember much...

[@puyol8700]

Works the other way around, too! I have a good Norwegian friend whom I often have a hard time understanding while sober (he's from Fredrikstad), but it works out just fine once we're a few beers in. Generally speaking, I have an easier time understanding Bergen dialect (to my understanding what is regarded as "Nynorsk") than dialects with grammar and vocabulary more similar to Danish. Fredrikstad dialect, to me, is just a competition of how many weird sounds you can sing in the shortest possible amount of time.

[@kl1541]

There was a real incident when a swedish police saw a man slept outdoors in the thick snow, he approached him but the man was drunk so the policeman thought the man was a dane

[@thehoogard]

There was this hilarious newstory a couple of years ago about the police arristing a man in sweden, who they thought were danish. Turns out he was just drunk.

[@die8quadratmeter]

I’m polish and it worked for me to when I went to Kopenhagen

[@belltowersubductions5104]

Speaking as an Irishman, I look forward to the day when the Irish, Welsh, English, and Scottish accents become completely unintelligible to each other, since as it is they’re not far off.

[@eddiewhitaker9613]

@Bluewolfe as someone who is english i can safely say i understand scotsmen very well, but im northern and i feel like southerners probably cant, because being very close to a lot of scottish people, i have heard that they actually prefer northerners

[@sabrinusglaucomys]

I laughed that you're "looking forward" to this rather than simply anticipating or even dreading it

[@peglor]

Which one of the many Irish accents are you talking about here? Apart from some of Northern Ireland (Where the accents evolved from Scottish accents in the first place anyway) they're not only different to each other, but dramatically different to Welsh and Scottish accents - which are also dramatically different to each other.

[@belltowersubductions5104]

@@peglor It was more sorta a general humerous statement aiming at how different the various dialects of English found in Britain and Ireland are from one another, and how it would be funny if, similar to what has happened inn the Nordic countries, the Dialects eventually became their own languages, I wasn't thinking too hard about the individual sub-accents found all across said Countries when I wrote that comment.

[@baizhanghuaihai2298]

My friend is from Uist and speaks Gaelic as her first language, and her husband is a native Irish speaker from the Cork Gaeltacht. They just speak to each other in Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic) and Irish and they understand each other. People who speak Donegal Irish understand Gaelic speakers well, too, and vice versa.

[@dianathescornofthemoon7762]

Lol someday an Azeri pilot says "Uçağımız Bakı'ya düşecektir." which means "Our plane will land in Baku." in their language but while the verb "düşmek" means "to fell down" in Turkey Turkish. So, a little chaos wasnhappened in the plane. :D

[@amirafiq70]

Does this ever happen?

[@serglian8558]

Amir Afiq He says That this may happen,it might.

[@Antyla]

Roun Dair Nope, he definitely didn't. "Someday an Azeri pilot say *s* " That, in English, would be the indicative mood... Okay, kidding. He did say "someday", which to me qualifies enough for possible future(depends on the intonation, though).

[@SgtTwilight]

I remember hearing from an English teacher that non Native English speakers have trouble grasping English tensing rules, and my experiences on forums with large SEA and Latin American userbases tend to ring true of that. Maybe it was jut an accident?

[@dianathescornofthemoon7762]

- this is just a b1 speaker pls

[@cozasful]

I was serving at a hotel restaurant a couple of years ago and there was a table of Spanish people and a table of Italian people. The next day they came to eat and they sat tat the same table. It took me a few beats but I soon realised that each one was speaking their own language and I asked them about it. I was completely stunned to discover that people who spoke different languages could communicate. That moment stuck with me (as it did with you) for the reason that my former perception and my biases towards language were completely shattered. It was a beautiful experience.

[@GdotWdot]

I know a pair of friends at work who go out for a smoke together. One speaks Spanish, the other one Italian; they seem to understand each other perfectly.

[@cozasful]

@@GdotWdot It's just beautiful. It's the reason I wanted to learn Spanish cause after that I can learn Italian easier or vice versa

[@lauragpm7582]

@@cozasful tbh after learning Spanish the easiest for you to learn would be Portuguese :) you should give it a try .... Btwwww I'm Brazilian and I've been learning Spanish and I use Tandem it made my Spanish improve like 30 percent just by speaking to natives :)

[@joaquinandreu8530]

It's very easy for spaniards and italians to understand each other if they are a little bit cultured and know the meanings of the words that are different (i.e: presto/rápido strada/calle, etc.)

[@SaffariRose]

They are all sister languages so they share similar origins. I'm currently learning Italian and I practice with my roommate who speaks mostly Spanish (and English). The better my pronunciation, the better she understands me!

[@kritanta7549]

I'm Brazilian and for us is easy to understand Spanish without studying it, but for our neighbors is really hard to understand Portuguese without studying!

[@WestCountryGurl]

I'm a Spanish speaker, and I sadly don't understand much Portuguese at all. :( I understand Italian the best, and even L'Occitan French more than Brazilian. It's very weird how Portugal is so close to Spain, yet I don't understand much of it.

[@Naharu.]

can confirm, l am from Brazil and had to talk with some spanish-speaking people on the airport once. It was clear that l was understanding them better than they were me, but at the end we finally could understand a little so l could help them around

[@andreesapissarra]

It's the same in Europe. A Portuguese person usually can understand Spanish, but the Spanish person is going to have a hard time understanding us

[@SEELE-ONE]

I'm Mexican and understood Brazilian Portuguese easily while in Brazil (except that time I accidentaly ordered my marmita as take-out)... Just use short, simple sentences...

[@coletrain546]

Im a usa born mexican and Spanish is my 2nd language and I can only make out like 10% of words in spoken Portuguese cus I learned how they're pronounced also I can read and understand about 70% of written Portuguese so I can vaguely understand the Portuguese comments on videos

[@magnusengeseth5060]

For Scandinavia there's also the influence of media, especially for those who grew up with only a few tv-channels to choose from. Most Danes/Norwegians older than 30 or so grew up watching a lot more Swedish tv than the other way around. This was especially true for children's tv with the massive hits based on Astrid Lindgren's books (Pippi Longstocking etc.)

[@magnusengeseth5060]

This can sometimes be really funny as a Swede living in Norway, since every time an older Norwegian wants to prove to you that he can speak Swedish, what they end up speaking is this old-timey tv accent that I don't think anyone ever spoke in their daily life, with the possible exception of Stockholm cabbies in the 40s or something. "Jåkkan pråtta sveenska"

[@keagaming9837]

Pippi Longstocking was a Scandinavian show? Never knew that, honestly I always thought it was British or from one of the more rural Boston areas at the very least.

[@Spacemongerr]

@@keagaming9837 The author of Pippi Longstockings, Astrid Lindgren, is basically a national hero in Sweden. There is even a reasonably sized theme park in Sweden, solely consisting of locations from her books. I still remember going in the giant village houses when I was on vaction in sweden as a child (the village was dimentioned for people 4-6 meters tall, to give the visitor the illusion that he was one of the semi-magical "small ones" in a regular human village.)

[@nurrnena7798]

Same in Estonia - during the Soviet Times, Northern Estonia had access to Finnish television, and because it was a gateway to Western culture, these channels were extremely popular. My uncle and mother speak fluent Finnish thanks to these channels.

[@blakops000007]

I'm an Iraqi who probably understand many of the Arab dialects with no problem, yet when I speak with my own dialect to other Arabs, especially levant Arabs, they have a harder time understanding me. This is usually because of the Isolation Iraq experienced in the last 40 years where a whole generation of Arabs grew up without being introduced to Iraqi movies and music, while Iraqis still were able to watch Syrian, Egyptian and Kuwaiti movies, soap operas and music.

[@edi9892]

I once heard something in a pop song, that seemed Arabic to me, in fact, I would have sworn that it is, but when I asked a Moroccan about it, she could only say that it is most likely Arabic, but she couldn't not tell for sure!

[@blakops000007]

edi Link? Maybe I can help.

[@blakops000007]

Yamen S. Hi friend, yes the Meghrebis are a problem, but I actually was capable of picking up on some of what they say when they wrote it in Arabic. But the problem is that they talk too fast, their Arabic is misspoken, they have many French words. And even when they speak with each other they don't even use Arabic letters; they use latin symbols lol.

[@edi9892]

I'm pretty sure that it was that song: /watch?v=LhrMggjXiiE Sometimes, I had the impression that she simply tried to forget everything Arab in the hope that would make her French ;-) She lives in France now and has a French BF, but she does get discriminated quite a bit for her Arab face. It's something I don't understand. I grew up as an Austrian in Germany, but I fiercely define myself as an Austrian culturally, despite most not seeing much difference in the first place and me having little contact to other Austrians... Everybody needs an identity and when the place where you're living treats you like a foreign body, you look somewhere else...

[@chrisdooley6468]

I just shared above a similar story! I learned standard Arabic in Cairo but when I travelled to Mali, Iraq and Morocco(I had to switch to french there lol) their regional dialects confounded me! They understood me fine but there really is a huge regional difference in dialects that transcends classical standard Arabic. Many a people in my time there in the ME told me that the Arabic I learned was best left for books and that I needed to learn a regional dialect and once getting that down start to learn bits of others to communicate better.

[@madkirk7431]

I just call this the "talking to a toddler" conflict.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

The child can understand you beter.

[@max-bh2bk]

Adult: "What do you want?" Toddler: "qnocnsiabw" Adult: "What?" Parent: "oh they want some water"

[@lululula-kt5iv]

that was genius

[@Cycles42]

@@max-bh2bk Toddler: "Nakcngihiuekatocso" Adult: "What is the little guy saying now?" Parent: "He wants to nuke Moscow."

[@chrstopherblighton-sande2981]

As a Galician and Spanish speaker I find it very easy to understand Brazilian Portuguese speakers but much more difficult to understand speakers of European Portuguese (unless they come from the north of Portugal) but I have found that Portuguese speakers in general have no problem understanding me. My favourite moment of mutual intelligibility however was with Italian. I was on holiday in the south of France waiting for a train and overheard and understood an elderly Italian couple discussing the destination of the next train. When they then asked me (in very broken French) if I knew which was the correct train to where they wanted to go, I thought 'what the heck, I'll reply in Spanish'. What followed was a 20 minute conversation in which we talked about a whole range of things, them speaking in Italian, occasionally using the odd Spanish word they knew and me talking in Spanish using the odd Italian word I knew or using a Galician word which I thought would be closer to Italian because of the use of simple vowels where Spanish likes to use diphthongs. It was such a wonderful experience to be able to enjoy such a great conversation with two really lovely people, and while talking to them, 2000 years of history seemed to collapse and in that moment it was like we were just speaking regional dialects of Latin.

[@frankendragon5442]

Essentially, you were!

[@yehudacavalli3927]

As a Brazilian Portuguese speaker that hasn't much contact with European Portuguese, I find Galician much easier to understand. And Spanish also. I think Galicians and Spaniards pronounce more the vowels, like Brazilians, than the Portuguese people.

[@CanisLupusSteparium]

Really? I was on the impression that European Portuguese and Galician were closely related and mutually intelligible. Thanks for sharing.

[@chrstopherblighton-sande2981]

You are right in saying that they are closely related, very closely related in fact and both languages are mutually comprehensible. However European Portuguese has a considerably different phonology. The way they pronounce vowels and some consonants differs from Galician - whose phonology is more like Spanish (especially in the standard form you hear on Galician tv) to such a degree that it makes it more of a struggle to understand until you get used to it. The dialects of Portuguese spoken in the north of Portugal however sound much closer to Galician. There's also the Mirandese language spoken in north-eastern Portugal which to my ear sounds even closer to Galician.

[@yehudacavalli3927]

From my own experience, yes, I can understand better a Galician than a Portuguese person. I have a theory that Brazilian Portuguese also kept some old traits of Portuguese and Galician-Portuguese spoken by the Portuguese people that "discovered" Brazil at the beginning of the 16th Century, whilst the European Portuguese developed in a different way. While Galician and Spanish developed to a way that looks more like how BP developed. Of course, also BP was influenced by other languages from immigrants that came in the early 1900's. But that's only my personal theory.

[@sarahkate8142]

When in Paris, I was told my Quebecoos accent was "adorable" and that Parisiens like the Quebecois accent now, since Celine Dion became famous

[@thibistharkuk2929]

Most french people find it even sexy now ;)

[@danymend5797]

Je le trouve bizarre personnellement, après c'est un avis personnel, tout dépend des gens en réalité.

[@luizalima8329]

Québécois to me is the same as European Portuguese. Vaguely familiar but in the end impossible to understand when spoken too fast

[@JStation3]

Cool, as an American English speaker, I always wondered if Canadien French was different from European French.

[@solenemb5546]

@@JStation3 The accent is very different (in Quebec, they accentuate different syllables, while we always accentuate the last in France), some words are more used there than here and the other way round, some words are specific to one of the other, and there are even some very bad friends (like the famous "gosse" which is slang for "child" in France and a male body part in Quebec...) That said, there are also various accents and vocabulary in France, Belgium and Switzerland, although the stretch isn't as huge as between Europe and America.

[@dhawthorne1634]

Pennsylvanian "Dutch" spoken by the Amish is very hard for German speakers to understand but the Amish understand German just fine. I've seen tourist interactions take a turn for the strange when the Amish ended up speaking English because it was easier for the German to understand but the German just keeps speaking German because the Amish vendor understands it just fine.

[@Lucas-yo3ut]

Actually Pennsylvanian Dutch is some kind of a palatine dialect (the dialect Germans speak in a small area in the western half of germany) since many settlers came from there. Somebody from Rhineland Palatinate can actually understand them. But German dialects are often not mutually intelligible. Unless it's standard German. I'm from the countryside of south Bavaria. Someone from Hamburg or Berlin could not understand anything. But of course everyone can speak high German too. But that's another thing

[@dhawthorne1634]

I am aware that it the "Dutch" is a misnomer. I didn't however know where the dialect originated. I'll have to take note if there are ever any tourists who can actually speak with them. The only person I am aware of like that is someone from the German deli at Central Market in Lancaster. He can communicate fairly effectively with the German Tourists and the Amish, though it is likely he is 3rd generation seeing as he seems most comfortable speaking English and has no accent.

[@Lucas-yo3ut]

if you ever notice any tourist who can understand them, ask them if they're from the Saarland or Kaiserslautern area. Because this is where they originate. I've been there with a friend from Saarland and he could actually understand them. I could as well, since I had been living in Kaiserslautern for some time but not as effectively.

[@Thumper17]

D Hawthorne I actually was with German friends on an amish farm in Canada and they couldn't quite understand my friends German. She's from Munich, not sure of the dialect, accent or if she used any slang but I found that curious.

[@Ekaekto]

Interesting. I find it ok to understand. A typical asymmetric intelligebility is Dutch v. German though. :-)

[@lindseycampbell7487]

First of all I’ve just spent a solid 45 minutes reading this comment section since it’s super educational. Second, stories! I’m American but I studied Spanish for 6.5 years in school and a bit on my own. During one summer in college I studied abroad in Florence, Italy and found that I was very easily able to get around with my knowledge of Spanish and bits of Italian. After this I ended up returning to the same school in Florence for my Masters degree. The fact that I studied Spanish really helped me learn the Italian language. Since that’s what I’ve been speaking for the past 7 months, my Italian is better than my Spanish now. But in Italian class there’s another girl who speaks Spanish and sometimes we help each other out by comparing the two languages. I’m also an English tutor, and the mom of the girl I teach is Spanish. I hadn’t spoken Spanish in about 3 months but when she started speaking it super fast to me after I told her I speak it, I could understand everything she told me! I think this proves the theory of exposure to both of these languages. Eventually I want to speak both Spanish and Italian fluently. Also, I lived with a host family before I had to fly home (due to coronavirus and concerns about ensuing travel bans). When I first moved in I didn’t know much Italian at all, so I would substitute words with the ones I knew in Spanish. Some of these words were common to Italian as well, so they were mostly able to understand. But some others weren’t the same and I would know this when the person would give me a very confused look 😂. Now I’ve found that since I’ve been learning and speaking Italian I compare Spanish-Italian instead of Italian-Spanish like I used to.

[@TheRealSpeedWolf]

Good luck with that as Spanish and Italian are similar, your brain will awfully confused the 2 as one of them it just more dramatic in speaking, I speak French English Spanish German Thai Tagalog to a fluent degree, when I'm in Italy or Portugal I let my Spanish take over without even trying, I am pretty sure it's because of my French and English that Help with the different pronunciation of words.

[@floatingsara]

This is a beautiful experience! My two cents: keep on reading and speaking both languages, it'll prove effective. My mom tried to learn German but got confused with English since she had no occasion to practice none of them. Luckily for me, I am constantly exposed to German and English (and French) so I'm not having the same problem. Nowadays we have plenty of tools to do so. Greetings from Italy!

[@pursuitsoflife.6119]

I find that languages are like a living organism, almost like a pet, if you will. It grows, breathes, and extends its branches or arms into different parts of your life. I have come to America knowing English and French, and I have been picking up Spanish here quite easily with my English/Romance background. Try nurturing your pet, and let it grow big!

[@rjfaber1991]

I always find it funny how Italian is easy to understand for Spaniards and vice versa, since Italian and Spanish aren't actually that closely related within the Romance family tree. Italian is genetically a lot closer to French than it is to Spanish for instance. Of course French's completely different phonology is a stumbling block for Italians wanting to understand French, but I still find it funny how Spanish of all languages (or at least all 'major' languages, not counting Neapolitan, Emilian or other languages of Italy) ends up being the one most mutually intelligible with Italian. Then again, I suppose it's not too dissimilar to the Danish-Norwegian-Swedish example given in the video. Danish and Swedish are a lot more closely related to each other than either is to Norwegian, and yet Norwegian forms the middle ground of mutual intelligibility. I suspect that in both Spanish-Italian and Danish-Norwegian, historical politics has played a role. After all, Norway was ruled by Denmark for three centuries, while much of Italy was ruled by Spain (or the Crown of Aragon, to be more precise) for a similar amount of time.

[@mariotheundying]

Did you go to Latin America? How did you react to learn that some words have different meanings on different countries?

[@FreezepondMapping]

There was a few times when I was reading a sentence in what I thought was Russian, until I noticed it seemed just slightly odd. After a few moments, I realized the sentence was actually in Ukrainian, and while I could not actually speak it, I could understand most of what I was reading. The same thing happens when I read Polish as well.

[@evanhardin]

I've had a similar experience. I speak Russian (as a second language) and when I hear people speak Ukrainian it sounds like they're speaking Russian poorly. Mispronouncing words, adding the wrong endings, or adding nonsense words. It's understandable, but garbled. It takes me a second to realize it's Ukrainian.

[@kyivstuff]

Freezepond Ukrainian and Russian are my first languages, but I better understand English and French (learned in school), and even Spanish and Italian (which I haven’t learned), than Polish. It’s so frustrating.

[@FreezepondMapping]

I think I would have to be drunk to speak Polish lol.

[@chrisdooley6468]

My Berlitz immersion teacher for over a year of intensive one on one was Bulgarian and much to my dismay after moving to work in St Petersburg, had taught me something other than standard Russian! At first I thought it was me - people would ask me to repeat or ask why I said something a certain way or added a word or sound. It wasn’t until I told someone who taught me that I learned that Bulgarian can be quite different from standard Russian like Ukrainian can. Thnx for sharing mate!

[@nermosh]

I'm Russian and I can understand Ukranian speech as well as writing, even scientific papers. However I cannot speak or write Urkanian at all. I find it very confusing that both languages have same letters and share some sounds, but in Ukranian letters will give a different sounds.

[@InvaderKush]

From one child of a teacher to another, I am grateful for your mother being a teacher! They don't get enough praise.

[@1BlueEyeCreativeStudio]

I'm an English speaker (American.) I took 4 years of Spanish in school, but no one else in my house spoke Spanish, so I was kind of on my own. In my Junior year of high school, while taking 4th year Spanish, I was very sick. I missed most of the year, having to to complete the year as a self-taught home-schooler. While I was home, I found a channel that had foreign language shows every week. Most were something like Telenovelas, which we watched at school (when I attended.) One day, I was enjoying what I thought was a Spanish show, though it all seemed a bit...off. I could easily follow the story and understood the dialogue for the most part, but the words and pronunciation seemed slightly alien to my ears. When the show returned after a commercial break, flashing the title on the screen for just a second, I was stunned to see that it was actually an Italian show! I was so confused. How could I understand Italian?! I asked my teacher about it the next time I saw her and she laughed. "They are very close, the languages. Muy bien, Querida, muy bien!" My teacher was pleased and gave me an extra A for the day. She was Argentinian and spoke 7 languages. She wasn't very impressed with anyone (including her own children) who spoke less than 5!

[@agostinagurgone5581]

Deben ser muy buenas las clases de idiomas en estados unidos, yo tuve inglés toda la secundaria y terminé sin saber ni saludar. Pero luego aprendí, sin darme cuenta, como? Mirando películas en Hindi con subtítulos en Inglés. Leía y si no entendía algo, lo adivinaba por el contexto. Ahora entiendo inglés y también hindi. Ah I'm also Argentinian, from an italian family, so i understand italian too :p

[@nobradors]

When I read you were stunned to learn it was italian I thought... Could it be she was being taught Argentinian Spanish? aaand bingo! Italian immigration was huge in Argentina, so much so that it gave our Spanish an Italian kind of singsong.

[@57thorns]

Well, it is not that hard to learn Swedish, Norwegian, English, German and Dutch. They are basically variations on 2-3 languages. If you instead go the latin path there is French, Italian, Portuguese and Latin for your first four. Someone that does flawless Finnish, Russian, English and Chinese however is impressive, even if it is "only" four languages, because they open up a few dozen languages at least. Apologies to languages I forgot to mention.

[@samsibbens8164]

@@Wildwildmint Depends how often you keep practicing those languages. I read and watch shows and movies in English (when it's the original language), I watch tv shows in Spanish when that's the language the show was made it and I text my colombian friend a lot. I speak French with my roommates and basically everyone who's from where I'm from (Quebec). Initially my French got rusty when I learned Spanish because I was using Spanish 90% to 95% of the time and speaking French pretty much only with my mom when she wasn't at work, and not that much. I also didn't know some new slangs that had developed in Quebec, and sometimes I would accidentally use the Spanish version of a word instead of the French one. Once you've reached a very high level of proficiency it becomes much harder to lose a language, it's mostly initially when most of your time is spent learning a new language that your other languages get rusty.

[@Likexner]

@@Wildwildmint Not true. You will get rusty if you dont use a language, but you wont get worse at one by speaking another.

[@pedrosampaio7349]

*goes through notifications* meme... meme... watched... watched... NativLang... Dunno why I'm even subbe... WAIT! NATIVLANG! How good can this day get!?

[@ramiromayorga_]

João-Pedro Sampaio it'd be better with World Cup matches:'c

[@gustavovillegas5909]

LMAO SAME DUDE

[@qwertyTRiG]

João-Pedro Sampaio NativLang and Artefexian uploaded on the same day. That's a good day for linguistics.

[@pedrosampaio7349]

TRiG (Ireland) too bad I didn't catch it yesterday due to time zones and me being sick.

[@loveesc]

As a Danish linguaphile I have read about this asymmetric intelligibility. And some suggest that one reason that Norwegians are better at understanding both Swedish and Danish, than Swedes and Danes understand them and each other could be because they are more use to hear different dialects of their own languages. The public TV and radio broadcaster in Norway have the policy that an employee should speak their own dialect on TV/radio, whereas both the Swedish and Danish public broadcast compagnies throughout their history favored (in the past, required) that employees spoke the standard dialect. Therefore the Norwegians are used to hearing their language being pronounced in many variations.

[@brukarnamnet]

Yes, this is very likely an important factor in explaining the asymmetry! Being exposed every day to quite extreme variation within our own language (some of the differences between dialects easily rival the differences between the official Scandinavian languages) both gives us a much larger passive vocabulary, and trains our brains to make sense of speech that sounds very different from our own. I assume "Norwegian" in this presentation means some version of a Oslo dialect. Though it represents the largest number of speakers today, that can hardly an average of Norwegian dialects... Both history and geography places it closer to the other Scandinavian languages. It would be interesting to see these kinds of calculations for other dialects. Personally, I normally have no trouble understanding Danish, but I wouldn't expect the average Dane to understand my dialect which phonetically is much closer to Icelandic than Danish :)

[@Smulenify]

There are dialects in Norway I find harder than Danish or Swedish, in fact some I really can’t understand at all! However I also find Danish easier than Swedish because I’ve been exposed to more Danish than Swedish on tv and on vacation.

[@jrnandreassen3338]

"The public TV and radio broadcaster in Norway have the policy that an employee should speak their own dialect on TV/radio" - This is mostly true, but the belt between Sande to Bamble never did. This rule you speak of is brand new by the way. We got told to speak "tilvent sosiolekt" like they do in Oslo or we had to convert to new norwegian, which is a purely constructed "dialect". So, according to NRK, we've never had a dialect worthy of TV. The first "hallodame" (woman who stood for presentation of each and every show) for NRK was a woman from Larvik called Kirsten Schøyen Seterelv. She chose to speak "bokmål" (tilvent sosiolekt - like they speak in Oslo) which is also a construct. She would never be allowed to do the job otherwise. Things have changed though. It took a comedian called Bård tufte to change this. After he got hired and had some successful shows they got used to the dialect.

[@Smulenify]

Jørn Andreassen True, people with Stavanger dialect still often get judged in Oslo (experienced that a lot), growing up the only Stavanger dialect on TV was completely different from the real dialects of the area, like Egenes meets Oslo dialect. Thankfully more and more actors get to keep their dialect. Teaching Norwegian in Oslo was a problem for le though, I wasn’t allowed to talk dialect which I understand.

[@jrnandreassen3338]

loveesc: Don't forget that bokmål, our main written language, was based on "DDD" (Den Dannede Dagligtale) which we got from Danish. And we have been colonized by Denmark, then Sweden, at one time both Denmark and Sweden. I like to think that we know both languages better because we are the smaller country. And genetically speaking we know from earlier on that it would be hell to pay if we didn't understand our Masters. I grew up with Swedish TV and only sometimes Danish TV. I'd wager that almost none of the reg'lar danes or Swedes have NRK (Our national broadcasting company). :)

[@jessicacampbell8670]

I'm Jamaican when he first explained the concept my mind went immediately like patois (patwah) and English, only to hear it in the end.😁

[@nihtwynn1022]

I went to Rome with my Latin class when I was in high school. Sitting on a train, a man started talking to me. I tried telling him that I didn't understand Italian that much, in Spanish. He slowed his speech down a bit and we ended up talking for about half an hour, me in Spanish, and him in Italian. Studying Latin probably helped somewhat as well. It was a great experience. Living in Sweden, I've had numerous Swedes thinking that I'm Norwegian, due to my West Swedish dialect. I've never had any trouble understanding Norwegians, but Danish is completely unintelligible. In contrast, I have friends from the southern part of Sweden who understands Danish better than Norwegian. My father has been working abroad much of my life, a lot of it in Germany. He studied German a looong time ago, but he still manages to communicate quite well. He just "Germanizes" Swedish and/or English words and couples it with what little German he actually knows. It's served him well. I've also heard that people with thick West Geatish dialect(Väsgötska, or more precisely Skaraborgska - Swedish) understand Dutch well enough to have a basic conversation without practicing the language beforehand.

[@jmmip202]

its always a good day when nativlang uploads

[@tintinsimon]

This channel is a gem

[@fyabun]

Yes it is a real gem. I've always had a passing interest in such quircky topics and also border languages. You should rename this channel "Tower of Babel".

[@gerulais]

I'm Romanian, and for me comes easy to learn the other Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese) because all these five languages have their origin in Latin. For example in Italian Sunday is domenica, and in Romanian is duminica. Just a letter difference. Mother is the same, mamma in Italian, and mama in Romanian. The Italian word is longer by one letter. My children speak Romanian fluently, and French and English. We live in Canada. I want them to learn our mother tongue, because I'm sure it will help them in future. And I've read somewhere that people that learn multiple languages since childhood can understand complicated problems better than the people that learn one language all their lives.

[@rorychivers8769]

I sometimes wonder if this is just a function of perspective - you are forced to consider languages on an abstract level when considering their different approaches, which in turn forces you to understand that there are any number of ways to approach a problem, rather than get trapped in what seems to be the only obvious solution. It gives you the ability to step back and look at the bigger picture, in other words. Good on you for raising your kids trilingual anyway, all languages are an empowerment.

[@gildenkanaldieletztelegion3248]

I´m german and I work in an office where we only have dutch client. So I was learning dutch at that time. My coworker, who is native dutch, called me and said that that she had a dutch client in the line, which she barely couldn´t understand because of his frisian accent. So she connected him to me. I was really afraid that I also wouldn´t understand him, if she as a native dutch had some trouble. But funny enough it was absolutely no problem to understand this person perfectly. I have no clue what the reason for this was, maybe my german helped me. But where I always struggle is with belgisch people, their dutch is really strange and they mumble all the words so much.

[@clas683]

Gildenkanal "Die Letzte Legion" I am not surpriced you could understand West frisian pretty good. In my opinion they have a clean prenounciation of words and they say ’G’ like the rest of the world. And ’you are’ = ’do bist’ in frisian (not ’je bent’) which is the same as german. I am a swede who has just red some frisian and listened to some frisian music and to me it looks like a pretty easy and lovely language to learn, shame it is declining.

[@sunriselg]

But at least grammatical genders make sense with Belgians.

[@Arado159]

I'm a native Dutch speaker from Friesland and have the exact same as you with Belgian Dutch (and other southern Dutch accents in general). As you say, it's like they mumble and just do not articulate things well enough to me. In turn, apparently many non-Frisian Dutch people can't understand my accent well, which I in turn find puzzling (I articulate everything so clear, don't I?? lol) . Interesting how that works.

[@henrylicitra2906]

I've been told I speak German with a very german sounding accent (native English speaker), but my vocab and grammar are not very good, which has made it tough practicing with fluent german speakers because they hear my German and start speaking quickly and I freeze up lmao

[@tollieman5750]

My native language is Afrikaans and my second language is English (currently also studying German) and to be honest Dutch to me sounds like Afrikaans but with a heavy accent. I can understand it easily as long as words are not joined together too much. I guess it makes sense because those three languages have similar origins.

[@kepagu]

I was puking one time, and a danish guy behind me asked «Who? Me!?»

[@dinamosflams]

LOOOL

[@arbonthepirate]

I used to work with this Jamaican guy who sat next to me. we had a guy from our Australian branch come visit us and our boss decided to have the Jamaican show the Australian around the facility. They were both speaking english but couldn't understand a word each other were saying. I understood both perfectly and ended up translating...English to English.

[@Rayvn7]

A Jamacain is perfectly easy to understand, unlike what this guy in the video says. If you don't know what a Jamacan is saying it's because he CHOOSES to use a bunch of slang or purposely sound bad. Just like if an American also does that, or if someone were to speak the way that Cosmopolitian writes, you would not understand 20% of what they are saying and you would look at them to indicate how stupid they are when you do understand them. But if a Jamaican uses only real English words, you can understand them easily. Jut like if a black American uses only real English words, instead of purposely sounding moronic, then any native or foreign English speak from any country will be able to understand them, but won't be able to understand if they purposely speak stupidly like some Jamaicans sometimes do.

[@arbonthepirate]

I didn't say that Jamaicans were hard to understand. Every person I worked with could understand they guy just fine. It was just the one Australian guy that couldn't. I have no idea why I am sure a linguist could break it down.

[@arbonthepirate]

I also had this situation happen to me with a Cajun man. I couldn't understand him at all but he could understand me just fine. His wife, who was born in california had to translate for me.

[@normaninconnu3633]

Jamacains have their own dialect of English (patwa/patois), which they speak among themselves.It is probably close to being a separate language.It only sounds moronic to morons who don't understand it or know of its existence.

[@sannemeijer8453]

I know two friends who have the loviest habit: they both speak their own language (Dutch and German) and understand each other perfectly. I have always loved how this back and forth of languages worked out

[@ZachValkyrie]

Danish isn't a language, it's a throat condition.

[@LuisAldamiz]

LOL I understand that is the most vowel-rich language, at least in Europe, with 11 vowels! It must be difficult to master, unless native.

[@benedictewrstad8379]

It’s norwegian with a potato in your throut. Kidding. Or maybe not. I like our danish neighbours anyway.

[@raptor48480]

@@LuisAldamiz I am proud to speak Quebec French as we have 14 vowels or 19 if we count nasal vowels

[@TuberoseKisser]

Lmao

[@finnishwehraboo8377]

LØL

[@atruv2089]

Well, I live in Cyprus (ooofff, controversial politics). Both my parent and I speak Turkish Cypriot, however since they teach Modern Turkish in school, my Cypriot Turkish is less Cypriot than theirs. One day, while at a shop in "south" Cyprus (ooffff the controversy), the workers were arguing on what to do. I, despite currently learning Greek, didn't have enough knowledge of it to understand anything. But my parents, who can't even read Greek, did understand what the problem was. The cash register was broken. They understood it, because they spoke a stronger dialect of Turkish Cypriot, while my Turkish Cypriot was more "Turkish with a funny accent" than actual Turkish Cypriot. I was a bit annoyed like, it is ME that is taking Greek lessons but it is THEM that can understand Greeks when they can't even read Greek???? >:(

[@adamantiumgonzalez8389]

Bertú Hahaha, funny

[@greatwolf5372]

Interesting, given the Cross in your profile I thought you would be a Greek Cypriot.

[@Zdrange03]

Turkish Cypriot or Cypriot Turkish?

[@atruv2089]

Judorange1980 "Turkish Cypriot" refers to the people, while "Cypriot Turkish" refers to the language. Edit: I read my comment again and realised that I have used the terms wrongly XD

[@atruv2089]

Great Wolf I would think that too, to be honest XD. But, no I'm not. I just grabbed the Flag of Georgia because I like it, and coloured it to Orange-Yellow, because I like that colour XD. I am interrested in Christianity though, but the explanations on the internet just confuse me. Also I live next to the border which is next to a church, so I can head the church bell in weekend mornings XD. This one sounds calm and very beautiful, but I know some that simply sound loud annoying!

Hungarians don't understand anyone or vice versa. Sad.

[@pliesj]

No mutual intelligibility with Finnish?

[@bogi18]

No, unfortunately, the relation is way too distant both in space and time, so much so that the connection itself was a linguistic discovery. As a native Hungarian speaker I've always been mystified by the mutual intelligibility of other related languages, and was trying to imagine what it would sound like, to hear someone speak in another language, which you know is definitely not yours, yet you can still pick up the meaning. This is how I imagined the babel fish working in HHGTTG

[@thewhacc2448]

From what I understand, Khanti and Mansi languages should be the closest ones to Hungarian. But they are so rarely used even in the territory where they originate from, that I have no idea if they are assymetrically/mutually intelligible.

[@bogi18]

Nope, tried it, listening to Khanti or Mansi recorded speech, understood absolutely nothing.

[@melinaDom]

This is weird but visiting Budapest I was surprised to find out how similar Spanish and Hungarian sound. There's no intelligibility whatsoever, of course, but often times I would hear people speaking and would initially think they were speaking Spanish.Then they would continue speaking and i didn't understand anything so I would confirm they were speaking Hungarian. This one time I was speaking Spanish with a friend and a Hungarian guy asked us if we were speaking Hungarian. He was a little drunk but it was interesting to see that same thing was happening to him. Does anyone know why is that?

[@BaileyDerby]

I remember teaching English to young Spanish speakers and being so confused when they couldn't guess what "catholic" might mean... they all lived in Spain, a catholic country, and the Spanish word they used for catholic is "catolico." I was genuinely so confused by that

[@pentelegomenon1175]

The "th" sound is quite rare outside of English so I assume it sounds a little weird to non-Anglophones, like an English speaker hearing a click.

[@julianmesa9641]

@@pentelegomenon1175 Spanish does have the 'th' sound, but it only happens with c/z in central and northern Spain

[@aleinadzap6040]

Well, "catholic" is pronounced /kæθlɪk/ and "católico" is pronounced /kaˈtoliko/ so they sound pretty different despite the common root. For starters, in "catholic" the stress is in the first syllable and the "o" is silent. While in "católico" the "o" holds the stress, so it's super important. As a result, "catholic" is 2 syllables while "católico" is 4 syllables. Finally, if the kids were from Spain, they would have associated the /θ/ sound with an "s" or "z" instead of "t".

[@nidohime6233]

That is because spanish do we end the words unlike english. If you pay some attetion you can see that many english words look unfinished for a spanish perspective. For example the word catholic looks like you where saying "católico" but without an -o at the end.

[@willrichardson519]

@@nidohime6233 that plays into the reverse English view that the way to speak Spanish or Italian is to add a vowel sound to the end :-)

[@ravenjoker254]

What a very good opportunity to talk about my own language! There's something like this going on with Czech and Slovak. I'm Slovakian, studying in Czech Republic. Our languages are very similar - actually almost as if they were the same language. I do recommend looking into this if you're intrigued. There's some grammar that's different, but I'd wager a good 90% of our words are exactly the same. Now, it seems that Slovaks have a much better time understanding Czech than the other way around. Personally I've never had a person not understand me in CR, and I speak exclusively Slovak, but I've heard some of my friends switch to speaking Czech to be better understood. One more thing, I've had a teacher from Australia, and she once said that while she's learning Slovak, she cannot understand Czech at all, and that she doesn't understand how we can. Also, legally they're two different languages, so I'm legally trilingual! Neat.

[@ondryaso]

Can you actively speak Czech though? Like, I do understand Slovak perfectly, but I wouldn't dare say a Slovak sentence for the sake of preserving my honour. If you can't, you ain't no trilingual. :P :D Otherwise, good for you.

[@ravenjoker254]

Y'know, that's a good point :D I don't think I can get to a level of actually sounding like a Czech person. Further research (and practice) required.

[@tusia3899]

This happens with Polish and Czech as well. When I'm talking with Czech speakers, they seem to understand me (speaking Polish) with no problems, but understanding them is quite tricky for me and I have to concentrate extra hard on every word.

[@kurapan_clips]

I guess they are from Ostrava or somewhere like that, very close to the border. I'm from Prague and I can't understand Polish at all.

[@ondryaso]

That depends on who you speak with. When a Pole and a Czech (with no experience in their respective counterpart's language) talk to each other very slowly and carefully, they usually manage to conduct some kind of a basic conversation, but I wouldn't exactly call our two languages mutually intelligible. It really depends on how often you interact with the other language.

[@NativLang]

Whoa... thank you for sharing your stories. We may now have the internet's best collection of asymmetric intelligibility tales right here in the comments! What a treasure. I'm still reading my way through all of them. Oh and yes, I bought the nuts.

[@johnmatkinson]

NativLang so when I was a kid, my family (fairly generic US English speakers - think CNN anchor) went to Canada and brought my cousin, who at that time had never left Texas. We were doing fine until we visited a shop run by a recent immigrant from Scotland who spoke with a strong accent. My immediate family could understand both of them, but they could not understand each other. And that is within the same language!

[@helpahoe920]

Ooo I wouldn’t have bought the nuts if i were you

[@Neldidellavittoria]

Jacek Sas. Yes, I remember my Ukrainian grandparents sometimes had tea with a Polish couple and a Russian couple, and they each spoke in their own language but somehow they communicated. Alas, my mother never spoke Ukrainian to us kids, because it was the language she used to talk to my grandmother about anything they didn't want us to overhear. Who knows, it might've come in handy to know Ukrainian as well.

[@HelgeTaksdal]

The reason for norwegians understanding other scandinavians is due to our diverse dialects, and the dialects having a high status compared to Sweden and Denmark. We have the written language of the Danes and the spoken tone of the Swedes.

[@Neldidellavittoria]

Yaa Obenewaah, It seems to be also true of many Spanish speakers from Latin America. I'm sorry guys, no offence meant, but I've seen lots of comments over YT complaining when a film is dubbed in Iberian Spanish.

[@christinaeneroth675]

Story time: I'm born and raised in Sweden but lived 5 months in London and studied at the Swedish school there. Prior to this I had mostly used English in writing, and even when living there I spoke a lot of Swedish as my classmates and most teachers were Swedes. Anyhow, one day I am waiting for my bus in London and this black woman, presumably from the south of USA, comes up to me. She starts speaking and I am liseting politely, hoping I can help her in some way, but have no idea whatsoever what she says. I can identify it as English but that is about as much as I can comprehend. My head is spinning and I am more or less paralyzed from trying to make sense of what she says; I'm to baffled to even ask her to slow down or try to speak more clearly. Eventually I think she is talking about a person but I have no idea of whom or why. I manage to reply with something like 'Sorry, I've never heard of him' and this is when she says the first few words I can clearly understand: 'YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF JESUS?!'. So, well, for several minutes I was unintentionally trolling some, presumably American, missionary, that could understand me but that I couldn't understand at all.

[@synkkamaan1331]

You've never heard of JESUS ? Did you think that the Brazilian football team only play with 10 men ?

[@normaninconnu3633]

Even Jesus couldn't provide a last minute miracle for the Brazilians!

[@abirkalai5688]

I'm Tunisian, had a hard time when I visited Lebanon (or to be more accurate, Lebanese people had a hard time fathoming what I say) that I decided to speak English (nobody speaks standard Arabic in everyday life). Note that I understood about 80% of their dialect but not the other way round. Tunisian and Lebanese are supposed to be dialects of the same language!

[@hemlocklannister6206]

It's very sad that even though these so called Arabic "dialects" are so mutually unintelligible, due to authoritarianism in the Arabic world, they are not allowed to be classified as separate languages. They are looked down on and are not even taught formally. No one even speaks MSA or Fus-ha in day-to-day life. I'm an Indian btw and this knowledge deters me from learning Arabic. If I would I'd start with Egyptian Arabic, since it has the most number of speakers.

[@rorychivers8769]

It's funny, the thought of learning Fus-ha seems really boring to me, like who am I actually going to speak to, and you kind of just confirmed it. I have the exact same level of apathy I have to learning Latin, it's fun academically but I have no interest in going to the Vatican. I think Arabic would be way more popular if dialects were taught. I mean realistically, what are the chances of me ever becoming a poet or a newsreader in the Arab world? I just want to understand a bit, damnit.

[@sephikong8323]

It's because they are not the same language, Arabic (at least nowadays) does not exist as a cohesive native language, saying that Tunisian, Syrian and Omani speak the same language would be like saying Portuguese, French and Romanian speak the same language, they are related languages that descend from Latin, but they have evolved differently since

[@rorychivers8769]

@@sephikong8323 It's like trying to claim there is a single "Germanic" language . I mean I love learning Hochdeutsch, but I wont ever be able to use it at my local bakery... Plus it's a glorified conlang anyway :)

[@sosoham9692]

@@rorychivers8769 are you really asking to Chang standert fusha Arabic to dailact academically,that just taking the charm of it,if you want to learn it ,learn it well,or not at all.

[@Ralyx0]

I have a speech disability, so I'm usually asymmetrically intelligible!

[@grillygrilly]

What speech disability?

[@Freakschwimmer]

That a pretty witty comment :D

[@floatingsara]

Lol !

[@seagullokapi]

ayy same

[@rowynnecrowley1689]

I used to pride myself on being able to understand most, if not all speech impediments/accents. Hairlip, traech hole, heavily accented broken English, whatevs. Nearly impossible to avoid in the Customer Service Industry. Can't do it so much anymore tho, cuz I can barely make out perfect English anymore as my ears are going to hell.

[@sterichardsson]

6:48 Norway was under Danish rule from 1376-1814... that might be the resolution of that mystery.

[@Carewolf]

Well, as an original cause. The result is a shared vocabulary. Which makes Danish and Norwegian closer even to this day, though grammar and pronounciation is different. Also both countries have a wide range of extreme dialects that are further from their own standard tongue, than the other language. Swedish has different words, which makes it tricky for Danish and Norwegian speakers. Even if it is retardedly overpronounced just like Norwegian.

[@mettehustad8007]

And then under Swedish rule from 1814 until 1905

[@bevanderson6245]

Written records in Norway until the 20th century were kept in Dano-Norsk because the early record-keepers (priests or ministers) were often educated in Denmark (or educated in Norway by someone who had been educated in Denmark); some had trained for the priesthood and knew Latin, perhaps German (after the Reformation). e.g., Martin is recorded as Martinus (Latin influence), or Erik is written as Erich (German influence) in some cases. Then there are also three extra letters of the alphabet for each language, phonetic spellings of local dialects, as well as interchangeable letters of the alphabet, notably I/J/sometimes Y, and W/V, G/K, K/Q, D/T), and no Norwegian dictionary was written until 1917, so there were no standardized forms of spelling. In modern Norway there are two official languages (Bokmål and Nynorsk) that everyone learns in school, plus English as a second language from early grade school forward through the end of their formal schooling so they often know English as well (sometimes better) than native American English speakers. I studied modern Norwegian in the early '80s knowing that the three Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible (at least in written formats) and knowing one meant I'd be able to read all three. That did not prepare me for all of the above, plus Gothic penmanship in the earliest records when I got my first computer twenty years later in '01 and started doing genealogy research in all three languages, starting first with Norwegian. The learning curve was more like trekking straight up the side of a mountain without safety lines until I found groups of people on various genealogy lists who could help with all of that as well as deciphering handwriting, abbreviations, and transcribing Dano-Norsk. I got a Dano-Norsk-to-English Translating Dictionary from a museum (they had extras), copyright 1875, but most of it is in Gothic type. Yikes! Altho Norway always functioned as a separate country, Norway was under the "protection" of Denmark until 1814 when Denmark was losing land during the Napoleonic wars. Norway signed their first constitution on 17 May 1814 (still celebrated today as Syttende Mai - like July 4 in the US), and was then under the "protection" of Sweden. The Norwegian intelligentsia pushed for separation because they felt there were too many influences on their language, and they also wanted to "Norwegianize Norwegian." Because the language and customs of Denmark were closer to Norwegian (considering past centuries and written records, etc.) Norway took the second son of the Danish royal family as their king and became a completely separate country again in 1905; his descendants are on the throne of Norway today. Because of a combination of taking Norwegian for two years (altho I forgot most of it because there was no one with whom I could practice the language), doing genealogy research in all three countries, and watching movies or television shows with English sub-titles from all three countries, I can understand some of the simple sentences and phrases and a few words here and there in spoken Norwegian and Swedish as long as they don't talk too fast. However, spoken Danish, is, to my ears, mostly unintelligible, and I find it extremely difficult to try to speak words in Danish; most words seem to be pronounced from the throat, it sounds very Germanic to me, and I can't imitate the sounds.

[@floatingsara]

Southern Italy was under Spanish rule for some centuries, North-West Italy under French rule and North-East Italy under Austrian rule. The funny thing is that mutual intelligibility goes better between Spanish and North-East Italian dialects than anything else.

[@Tatwinus]

@@bevanderson6245 the problem with danish is that every dane swallows a potato at birth but noone manages to get it all the way down into the stomach.

[@berkleypearl2363]

I’ve been studying Swedish and the first time I heard Norwegian I was really surprised. I was like “this sounds like it should be Swedish but it’s not.” It was weird because I could kind of follow along even though I’d never heard Norwegian before

[@Redhotsmasher]

Berkley Pearl As a swede I agree, Norwegian kinda sounds like "funny Swedish" in a sense, at least the "standard" (?) Norwegian you hear on TV. Nynorsk is way harder than Bokmål though, I remember reading Wikipedia in Bokmål and Nynorsk once and Bokmål just looked like "funny Swedish with some funny words" to me while the Nynorsk grammar felt really weird and confusing.

[@WaffleAbuser]

And then we have Tröndersk: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bGO7mKGuZdSsY7M

[@thatallguy16]

As a norwegian, I agree with nynorsk being weird and confusing. This despite me being from the west coast of Norway, where the spoken language is more similar to nynorsk than bokmål. Also, something I find quite neat, bokmål is a sort of norwegianized (made to be more similar to the norwegian spoken in and around Oslo) written danish, whilst nynorsk is an amalgam of all the southern (south of Trondheim) spoken dialects of norwegian. Bokmål and nynorsk are the results of us trying to make our own written norwegian, since we only used danish when writing up until 1814, when Denmark-Norway was dissolutioned, and Norway came under a personal union with Sweden (which I'm sure you're aware of, but it sets the stage for why we have two writing systems of (theoretically) equal value and status). The reality is that most people write using bokmål, but each municipality chooses whether bokmål or nynorsk is its standard. Even so, everyone learns both bokmål AND nynorsk in school, because they are both considered "part of our tradition and heritage".

[@jespoketheepic]

Norwegian simultaneously looks more like Danish and sounds more like Swedish.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

I've been studying Norwegian and the same thing happened to me lol

[@ЙованДобройевичь]

Sometime ago When I was in Turkey, me and my father met 2 guys who we thought were Russian, since we both knew Russian, we decided to have a chat with them They told us they were Ukranians, which at first didn't seem like a big change since Ukranians also know how to speak Russian, it was only after me and my father were talking to eachother in our native language (Serbian) and vice versa, that we realized why they can understand our "Russian" better that we can understand theirs So basically, our Russian wasn't perfect, it had a lot of Serbian words in it, Serbian grammar etc etc But it was still somewhat understandable since Serbian is also close to Russian, but their Russian was perfect, since they were from Donbas, and also, Ukranian is much closer to Serbian than Serbian to Russian, so they basically had the advantage of understanding our crap Russian, while we had to try and understand their official Russian, btw, that's also the reason why they could understand me and my father speaking Serbian as much as we could understand them speaking Ukranian

[@zelena_helena]

Some time ago I heard Serbs speaking Serbian on a street of Odesa and as a Ukrainian speaker, I understood maybe 50% from speaking and 50% out of context. Russian is the most close to Bulgarian btw

[@easytiger6570]

I am ukrainian and this happened to me when visiting Croatia, communicated with croats in our native languages, understood them fully, but they apparently struggled to understand me. Some words are more similar to ukrainian because both languages are slavic and that's where white Croatia was, and some words were more similar to russian because of how church Slavonic influenced russian

[@ЙованДобройевичь]

@@easytiger6570 yeah Croats probably have harder time understanding others Since for the past 30 years, they have been trying to distance Croatian from Serbian, thus making them ever so slightly more distant to other slavic languages

[@easytiger6570]

@@ЙованДобройевичь Lets not get political

[@ЙованДобройевичь]

@@easytiger6570 i agree

[@tomaperson3844]

I speak Slovak and It's incredibly easy for me to understand Czech, but it's not so easy for Czech speakers to get what I'm saying. I can also understand Slovenian and Polish but it takes a bit longer, and Croatian too. It's quite fun how these languages are connected.

[@kristiangeorgiev5915]

totally agree

[@HeroManNick132]

But 1 thing surprises me that usually the Czechs and Slovaks are able to understand better Macedonian than Bulgarian (even if these languages are like Czech and Slovak). Seems the hardest Slavic languages for the West Slavs to understand is Bulgarian. And me as Bulgarian I would say Polish is the hardest because of these pz, cz, sz sounds. If I read this very carefully I will be able to understand 30-50% but in conversation like 10-20%. Even if Czech and Slovak are challenging too they are surprisingly easier because they kinda sound like the Serbo-Croatian and the Slovenian language but more complicated.

[@polishhussarmapping258]

Do you understand written Polish better than spoken Polish?

[@jakubzeleznik1232]

It is pretty weird how similar Slavic languages are. I'm Slovak as well (though born and living in Canada) and have very little trouble with Czech. If I concentrate, I can also somewhat understand Polish and even a bit of Serbian, surprisingly. My parents who grew up in Slovakia can understand Czech perfectly, Polish near perfectly, and then also Russian. My mom's cousing also grew up watching Polish TV. He now understands Polish perfectly but can't speak it.

[@clementpoon120]

might be just me but i found slovak and czech more similar to ukrainian

[@Ice_Karma]

I'm Canadian, and I at least used to be fluent in Standard French _in spite of_ the Canadian education system, rather than _because of._ Some years ago I was helping a guy from Québec navigate public transit; because of his Québec accent I asked him to speak English to me, and I spoke French back to him. Beautiful-each of us using our non-native language to speak to the other in their native language. =3

[@sammosqueda177]

KooriShukuen I’ve done this many times with students who speak English as a second language. I use my horrible Spanish to talk to them and they respond back in English. I think it also helps them learn that it’s okay to make language mistakes lol

[@Oxmustube]

KooriShukuen I am french canadian and I have no problem understanding movies from the sixties, either in original french or translation from american movies, yet now I need subtitles. The shift that has happened in France over the last 30 years is remarkable. Especially due to the centralisation of vowels via the influence of Arabic speakers.

[@saylitiwaciwin6762]

@@Oxmustube Excusez-moi, de quoi parlez-vous lorsque vous évoquez la "centralisation des voyelles" ? Etait-ce le processus de désarrondissement des voyelles (ɔ -> ʌ) ? De plus, peu importe le changement phonétique, il me semble assez difficile d'attribuer le processus de divergence entre la version européenne et la version canadienne du français à l'influence d'une langue telle que l'arabe (surtout que les européens francophones ne maitrisent pas dans leur majorité l'arabe qui leur semble une langue étrangère), peut-être la centralisation faisait référence à l'affaiblissement des voyelles dans les dialectes maghrébins, était-ce le cas ? Pouvez-vous éclairer ces divers points, s'il-vous-plait :)

[@Oxmustube]

sayli tiwaçiwin Par influence de l'arabe, je parle surtout des locuteurs natifs de cette langue qui habitent maintenant dans la région parisienne. Puisqu'en arabe on retrouve moins de voyelles qu'en français, certains linguistes pensent que ceci pourrait expliquer la disparition de la distinction entre des paires comme Rome et arôme, pâte et patte, côte et cote, etc. Si une autre explication plus plausible existe, je serais extrêmement intéressé à en prendre connaissance. Si le terme centralisation est fautif, je m'en excuse.

[@kellyhigh4087]

I am a native English speaker and trained in Parisian/Standard French. I got a job that requires Quebecois French and as soon as any of them hear my accent, we both speak in Franglish or we end up emailing back and forth instead of speaking. I doubt I will ever get the accent. My English accent comes from the American South with some Minnesotan, so Creole French comes a lot easier than Quebecois.

[@alexreid1173]

This reminded me of something that my dad pointed out to me: so my dad works in IT, which, to fit stereotypes, is heavily populated by Indian people. These are people from all different parts of India with many different accents and first languages, but they all have one in common: English, as a second language. Except...for many of them, they can understand standard American just fine, though the often understand my dad more because his heavy exposure to these people has really screwed his accent... But many times, my dad has to act as a translator to two different Indian people speaking English. They simply can’t understand each other’s accents at all. And they don’t have the same native tongues either! But he’s also talked about how some would understand others but the others wouldn’t understand them, which is what reminded me of it. I’m honestly really fascinated by that and could definitely do a whole video about Indian languages and dialects. Great video!

[@bornabratanic1745]

This reminds me when I went to Slovenia to see a concert there with friend(we are from croatia) Slovenian and croatian are both slavic languages, but I have real hard time understanding slovenian. I remember speaking to locals, in croatian, who replied in slovenian. I asked them to talk in english, and I started speaking in english as well. Then they told me, that I can speak in Croatian, they understand me. In the end, I was talking in Croatian, and they would reply in english, and I always found it fascinating, why it is so, from linguistic perspective

[@ulrikholst4367]

I'm Norwegian and i find swedish easy to understand, but i find danish a lot harder. It is also easier for Norwegians to understand Swedes than the other way around. When we grew up here in Norway we watched Swedish TV shows for children, so that might be why.

[@OliverPerssonMusik]

I who live in Värmland have a much easier time speaking to a Norwegian than someone from the south or stockholm area. When you reach Värmland, especially the more northern and western part, you can hear the transistion from Swedish to Norwegian. There are just some words that are different that you need to get used to to flawlessly understand Norwegian as a swede. Trenger can be confusing at first, as in Swedish that means tho push you between something tight. Rolig, means calm, but for us its "to be fun". as a Swede though, you guys sound so fucking happy and cute all the time, for us, its babytalking all the time.

[@R0BIN_]

Jävla norge tar våra barnprogram!!!!

[@SepulchureValen]

Emil, Pippi langstrømpe og karlsson på taket. Kan ikke huske noen andre.

[@charliesieben5695]

@KatjaKat01 Jo, husker jeg så Bolibompa og lilla sportspegeln som liten. Skrotnissen og Redda Joppe.

[@OliverPerssonMusik]

@@uilulyili2026 from what i have heard, the oslo area atleast is very swedenized :)

[@AdventureThroughLife]

It's the same for Faroese and Icelandic. Icelanders have an easier time understanding Faroese than we have understanding them. I personally think it is because they are closer to the root language which is old Norse, and that is also why Norwegians have an easier time understanding both Swedes and Danes. Being closer to the root language can mean you are better able to understand the meaning behind words even if they have changed somewhat in a more evolved language

[@ChefRafi]

Yes! It depends on exposure too. Many people are not exposed to more than one language so it is harder for them to hear differences.

[@raggietyril9219]

Most people are exposed to several languages. English speaking countries are the exception (and a few others, like Japan)

[@torbjornlekberg7756]

+ Chef Rafi's Awesome World Well, that is not the issue with danish, Im afraid. The language is simply too similar to speaking with a mouthful of outmeal. It have been scientificly proven that danish is dificult to understand becourse it is so unclear. It takes danish children a full year longer to understand what their parents are saying.

[@nmichaels1]

I was born and raised in the US but my family is from Chile. I’ve been told that I speak Spanish like a Chilean with an American accent. I am an airline pilot so I not only visit Hispanic countries but I meet and help people from various places (including the US) who speak Spanish. Sometimes, the exchange is fluid and natural and sometimes I have to adopt an extra clear, paced, “standard” Spanish. Always an adventure.

[@TheRavenir]

I was born in Brazil and my native language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I've been living in the German-speaking part of Switzerland since 2000. This allowed me to experience this "asymmetric intelligibility" twice with two different sets of languages. First of all, Spanish seems to be easier for Brazilians to understand than the other way around, probably because for us they just "pronounce all vowels fully" while for Spanish speakers we "swallow/nasalize a ton of our vowels". Spanish phonology is simpler than Portuguese phonology. On the other hand, we have a lot of trouble understanding European Portuguese, while the Portuguese seem to have less trouble understanding Brazilians. Second, we speak a German dialect here in Switzerland called "Swiss German" that is so different from the Standard German spoken in Germany that it might as well be a different language. However, due to us being exposed to Standard German all the time both in school and in media, every German-speaking Swiss can understand Standard German perfectly. However, Germans have a very hard time understanding Swiss German, especially if they're from North Germany. So "asymmetrical intelligibility" is indeed a thing I have experienced time and time again and I find it quite fascinating.

[@SanktaLo]

Glim Glam Swiss German is so different! Northern German is just plain weird 😂 I learned from a southerner and can’t understand my northern Oma to save my life!

[@0799qwertzuiop]

Swiss people don't speak standart German perfectly. If a swiss person talks "standart german" any other german speaker will think that person talks with a swiss dialect. If a swiss person talks in dialect no outsider will understand it. This is the same for austrians but with higher intelligibility.

[@sunriselg]

If Swiss people speak standard German they have more of a Swiss accent. I wouldn't call that a dialect. If they speak their actual dialect, Austrians will have a really hard time as well (unless they're from Vorarlberg, of course).

[@TheRavenir]

I can say from experience that while all Swiss people from the German-speaking region can speak Standard German, they often do so with a heavy Swiss accent. Also, they're often unwilling to speak it, since they're used to speaking Swiss German most of the time.

[@dynodaniibitesx3]

Can you do a video on Slavic languages? Polish is my first language but I have similar experiences with Scandanavians. IE: I can understand Russian, but Russians can't understand me--I can't understand Slovakian, but Slovaks can understand me--Czech and Poles, in my experience, communicate most easily.

[@mycelia_ow]

@Claystead, cheeki breeki, comrade

[@-haclong2366]

Slavic was a single language until very recently, much like Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian were all Norse until recently.

[@uzovkakachnolosi1248]

I'm Czech and I can understand Slovaks all. When speak a Pole to me, I must concentrate and after a time understand I quite well. With writing polish language have I no problem with understanding, but I can write polish nothing. :-D

[@BretislavStasa]

x x Czech and Slovak can understand each other 99% but younger generations are having bigger and bigger troubles reading and in some cases even getting some words and context. I'm Czech and I get 30% of Polish but I come from south and was never really exposed to Polish language.

[@alen-bm4ej]

x x Kaj pa slovenščino lahko razumeš?

[@JudithBarbosa]

i survived a few days in rome speaking spanish! my english boyfriend at the time was so perplexed by how i could speak one language to someone and hear one back and still figure things out! it wasn't 100% accurate all the time, but it made navigating the city and ordering food much easier.

[@DieAlteistwiederda]

Judith Barbosa I mean my first language is German and I learned English and a little bit of Spanish in school so I kind of have that thing with a few languages in Europe but mostly when I read them. I can almost fluently read Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian without even being able to pronounce most words but I just get what the words mean because they look like German and/or English and I can understand Italian, Romanian(kind of because of the Slavic influence), Portuguese and French. I also don't have a hard time picking up new vocabulary in either language and copy the pronunciation.

[@cerberus3721]

My father did the same in Rome speaking portuguese and I did in Argentina with they speaking spanish and me portuguese...Is really cool see that latim languages can understand a litle of each other until today!

[@Qball42]

I was once triangulated in an asymmetric intelligibility situation. I had an Egyptian friend who was trying to order from an African-American cashier at a restaurant. Everyone was speaking English but I had to interpret for both of them.

[@demopem]

I think the Danish-Swedish situation is mainly due to two factors: Danish tends to have "soft" consonants, sometimes slurring over them or almost skipping them completely. In Swedish on the other hand, the consonants are important for identifying words. So to a Swede, Danish becomes a blur of vowels, while (I'm guessing) to a Dane, Swedish sounds almost over-articulated. The other factor is modern media. For, say, the last 50 years, a fairly large part of Denmark (and Norway) have been able to listen to Swedish radio and TV broadcasts, while only a small part of Sweden can get the broadcasts from its neighbors.

[@Rawr98]

demopem that was a lot more constructive and interesting than 'potato mouth' and gave me some insights. Thanks!

[@demopem]

You're welcome. I should add that Swedes usually find it much easier to understand written Danish. Actually, Danish and Swedish are more closely related, historically, than Norwegian and Swedish. Old Norse first split into a western (Norwegian) dialect and an eastern (Danish-Swedish) dialect, although it's hard to believe when you hear them today. :)

[@Redhotsmasher]

As a swede, understanding written Danish is slightly harder than understanding written Bokmål Norwegian which is slightly harder than understanding written Swedish, but spoken Danish is indeed difficult to understand because it sounds slurred and gargly compared to Swedish.

[@mytube001]

Older Danish speakers have much less of the "vowelization" of consonants than younger speakers. A 60-year-old is usually easy to talk with, while a conversation with a 20-year-old can be very challenging. Danish is evolving (or devolving) rapidly. But after a few hours, most Swedes will adapt and get used to the differences and Danish will the be as easy as it should be given the closeness of the languages. Danish spoken with a Swedish accent is almost straight Swedish.

[@element4element4]

As a danish speaker I have always thought the same thing. When you hear a swedish word, you can almost spell it as every vowel and consonant is pronounced more clearly (except crazy sounding words like skägg). I don't know much about radio and TV influence, atleast these days. I always feel the countries "mingle" too little in the media. There were a few Danish-Swedish political debates a few years ago with politicians from both sides where people spoke their own language. I wish there were a lot more of that, such exposure would make it so much easier for everybody to understand each other and protect these languages. I love how norwegians care about their language, but sadly I can not say the same about danes. Each generation add like 20% extra english words into each sentence they say. I currently live in north america for studies, but last time I went back to denmark I heard stuff like this in the train: "Kender du den der _crazy _game, det er _completely _amazing. _Honestly man, jeg har _completet alle _levels _multiple _times." I don't even know which language this should be considered as.

[@ksub91]

When I saw the title I directly thought about Danish, because my native language is Swedish. I’ve been to Denmark two times, it’s so fascinating that I can speak to them in Swedish, they understand me well enough, but when they answer me I just look like a complete question mark and they change into speaking English instead.

[@SweetPotato___]

Ok so norwegian the middle ground between danish and swedish. I am a norwegian speaker myself and i had an instance a couple of years ago where i had a friend who was danish and a friend that was swedish every time they said something, i had to say it in norwegian so the other part would understand, because norwegian is more understandable. I personally find swedish easier when i hear it, and danish in writing is almost the same as the norwegian writing system “Bokmål”. I also think norwegians might be more exposed to the languages because its often on tv and very often without subtitles. And the diffrent dialects in norway make it so we are idk more used to change in pronunciation. Anyway its super cool that you made a video out of this! You should make a video on the different norwegian dialects because that’s interesting we dont even say i (me) the same around the country.

[@BavarianHobbit]

I always thought that norwegians understood both better because they were in a union with each of them for a long time before independence so they have influences in their language from both other scandinavian countries.

[@Orbixas]

Yeah, I remember up until about mid 2000s, when Norwegian dubbing started becoming more popular on TV. Maybe the next generation of Norwegian speakers will have a harder time understanding Swedish and Danish because of the lack of exposure through TV?

[@yehudacavalli3927]

Yes! I learn Swedish and I feel exactly the same: understanding someone speaking, Norwegian is much easier for me. Writing, however, sometimes I can read a whole sentence and still not be sure if I'm reading Norwegian or Danish. I can understand the phrase completely, but can't be sure of what language it is. My trick is to always look for "af" or "av", and the amount of "d" in the words (like "jeg ved" and "jeg vet").

[@JanBruunAndersen]

Your Danish friends ability to understand Norwegian might be due to Fleksnes (Rolv Wesenlund) - kzbin.info/www/bejne/fpSah2BmhrVgidk That TV show was very popular in Denmark.

[@koppadasao]

No, +Jan Bruun Andersen, it's more due to the fact that most Norwegian actually speak something that's more akin to a dialect of Danish

[@janmeyer3129]

We ran into an unexpected asymmetry issue when we found that our overseas students from Hong Kong (but not mainland China) couldn’t understand our anatomy lecturer from Glasgow (but were okay with Australian English and Indian English speakers)

[@anonymousonechannel]

I mean, I’m pretty sure this is because Scottish accents are a bit hard to grasp for non-Scottish people in general, rather than because Cantonese is somehow intelligible with Australian English and Indian English but not Scottish English lol. Glasgowian accents are usually at least understandable, so that’s strange.

[@2112jonr]

Fair play to them. The majority of English speakers in England have HUGE difficulties understanding strong Glaswegian accents and dialects. Ask anyone south of Birmingham and it's almost totally unintelligible to them. People in the south of England in particular have the most difficulty understanding strong Midland, Northern and Scottish English accents as they only hear what's on TV and Radio most of the time, and rarely venture into the north of the country, making dialect and accent comprehension very much a one way thing if you're born in England.

[@carinegaaren7867]

Norwegians understand danes and swedes better than they understand us maybe because Norwegian itself consists of a wide specter of dialects, witch are very different in both pronunciation and words, so we are used to kind of looking for the keywords and meaning of the sentence and thereby being able to respond, and we are used to many different ways of pronouncing a word. I remember I was in Sweden and asked for the wardrobe which is "Garderobe" in Norwegian and the girl in the cashier did not understand what I said. I said it over and over again, wondering what the Swedish word for it might be, until a man in the queue said "I think she means "garderob"". It was the same exact word but without an "e" at the end and the "o" pronounced as an "å", and she did not understand that was what I meant, I was shocked.

[@NugNugTheNugget]

I find it so fun to interact with other scandinavian languages mainly because we have the advantage over swedes

[@jeanbonnefoy1377]

and from the French word: garde-robe !!! interesting... brought to Sweden by Bernadotte???

[@carinegaaren7867]

@@jeanbonnefoy1377 Maybe. Scandinavian languages have much influence by French, German and English

[@PennyAfNorberg]

@@carinegaaren7867 as do german when I was quizzed in german for the word for tickets i did answer das tickets, and the teacher had to give me right on that, but he wanted der fahrkarten(en?)

[@OliverPerssonMusik]

I just... That word shouldnt even be hard to guess? Maybe i have an advantage from living close to Norway (Northern Värmland) But god dammit, that some Swedes cant understand Norwegian is to me mindblowing. GARDEROB FOR CHRIST SAKE!

[@davidmanning4759]

But did you buy the nuts?

[@lolaopal8884]

I am an Irish speaker (not native but now kind of fluent) and I was so startled by how much I could understand from Scottish Gaelic. It is so similar, there are just a few spellings and consonants that are a little different. I wonder if it is the same the other way around

[@FakeGuthix01]

Lola Opal There are some dialects of Irish that are closer to Scottish Gaelic and some that are not so close.

[@Hwyadylaw]

As far as I'm aware, Gaeilge and Gàidhlig are pretty much parts of a dialect continuum (though they may have become more distinct over time). Basically some parts of Scotland close to Ireland and parts of Ireland close to Scotland have very similar Gaelic, while regions farther away have less in common.

[@JazzPikmin]

Munster Irish dialects (the one I know) can't understand Ulster dialects well enough to have a conversation but it does work vise versa

[@Ana_crusis]

well that's not a surprise, is t it? he two languages are essentially the same language! Did no one tell you that??

[@JMM33RanMA]

@@JazzPikmin My great aunt was the only living family member with the brogue [soft Cork brogue], when I later encountered Dublin and Ulster accents I found their English difficult to follow, especially the Ulster one.

[@biaberg3448]

I’m Norwegian, when I was a child we listen to swedish popmusic and watched swedish childrens programs without subtekst or dubbing. So we learned Swedish. My children 26-28 didn’t. They understands English far better than Swedish. There are a lot of total different words in Norwegian and Swedish. Written Danish and written Norwegian are very close. But it sounds very different. The most used Norwegian written language was originally Danish, because Norway was a part of Danmark for 400 years.

[@2112jonr]

I've read that for English speakers, Norwegian is the easiest language to learn (not sure which one), as its roots are the closest to English. Despite English adopting about 50% of its vocabulary form French, we still use an incredible number of words that have Norse origins, especially in the Midlands and the North of England.

[@FluxTrax]

​@@2112jonr Actually, Nynorsk is more similar to English as it has shedded much of the Danish and German influence. Somme words are strikingly similar

[@natasama1069]

As a Serbian, I can't really understand Slovenians, but Slovenians can understand me!

[@perunski8359]

Natasa Ma It's quite the opposite for me. I'm Croatian and have no problem understanding Slovenian. However I have problems with Macedonian and Bulgarian, Macedonian being less tricky. I think exposure plays a great role here. 😀

[@austink9408]

Isto! Kada su sloveni došli u našu školu, mogli su da nas razumeju bez problema, ali mi smo od njih razumeli samo nekoliko reči.

[@Muzikman127]

There's some facebook page I stumbled onto once where people from around the balkans speak to each other in a modern constructed language that's sort of "average south slavic" with a goal to have a unifying non national variant of the language to talk to each other. I don't even speak the language but I still found it interesting, and they all seemed like a bunch of really nice people.

[@vesonator]

I can relate, Macedonian is basically 95% the same as Bulgarian, and I can get the gist of what Serbians are saying, but I have troubles understanding Croatian even though it's supposed to be similar to Serbian.

[@emaselimovic8842]

Natasa Ma To ima dosta sa činjenicom da je mnogo starijih Slovenaca učilo srpsko-hrvatski. U Sloveniji sam bila samo jednom (iz Bosne sam) i ni riječ nismo morali progivotiti na npr engleskom. A što se mene tiče, sa slovenskim i ruskim sam na istom - često ih mogu razumjeti ali ne i oni mene.

[@Bushwhacker-so4yk]

I’m surprised no one has said that nobody who speaks English can understand the Scots.

[@ccheyenne]

I lived in the US as a child but have spent the past 20+ years in Europe, mostly in my native Spain. My partner, who is Spanish but speaks English well, went to Scotland on vacation a few years ago and had a lot of fun with how people speak there. I had no problem at all with understanding, but he didn't understand anything the first day or two and then slowly started to understand and as he picked up the accent and common words he'd never heard (like wee for small). We also heard quite a bit of Gaelic which we obviously didn't understand at all. Honestly Scottish is lovely.

[@moritamikamikara3879]

Not _the_ Scots but Scots. I can understand an English speaking Scottish person... most of the time, but if they try to speak Scots thats a fucked language and its more Celtic than English so idk what they're saying

[@olliert4840]

@@moritamikamikara3879 Scots is actually germanic I believe, it's Gaelic that is celtic.

[@moritamikamikara3879]

@@olliert4840 I get that it's a mixture of English which is Germanic and like Viking or something but I just can't make head or tails of it

[@morlandalamaga5899]

When I travelled through Scodland, I just needed to realise what was pronounced in a special way. Then it was easier to understand that the London people... 🤔

[@ladycarys3008]

I went to an international boarding school, i’m french bilingual, two of my class mates were spanish and italian bilinguals respectively. We had each spent most of our formative years and primary education in our secondary languages. One day for fun we decided to see how well we could communicate if we each spoke our other language. We actually communicated very well. Occasionally the italian speaker and I (french) would have a hard time, the the spanish speaker would repeat it and we could get it. I always put it down to a combination of factors, all three are Romance languages, we were all bilingual having learned through immersion as children so we were used to striving to understand.

[@MapsCharts]

J'ai pas beaucoup l'occasion de voyager alors je le fais chez moi en apprenant plein de langues et en discutant avec des gens dont c'est la langue maternelle sur Internet pour m'entraîner. Maintenant je connais au moins un mot dans une vingtaine de langues, je peux converser avec quelqu'un dans 5 langues et je parle de manière fluide 3 langues. Je trouve ça vraiment intéressant de comparer leurs similitudes... Par exemple, comment on dit "bonjour" dans les langues dont je me le rappelle : FR : Bonjour ES : Buenos dias PT : Bom dia IT : Buongiorno RO : Buna ziua EN : Hello/Good day DE : Hallo/Guten Tag NL : Goedendag SV : God dag GR : Καλήμέρα (Kalimera) RU : Привет/Здравствуйте (Privyet/Zdravstvouytye) PL : Dzień dobry CZ : Dobrý den SK : Dobrý deň HR : Dobar dan BI : Dobar dan SR : Добар дан (Dobar dan) MK : Добар ден (Dobar den) SL : Dober dan

[@Reine_Marina]

@@MapsCharts Yeah, I know a good amount of French, so I could mostly understand your comment. I also find that I can partially understand some related languages due to the similar vocabulary to French. Spanish for example has a lot of similar words that I can now recognize.

[@floatingsara]

Check the channel "Ecolinguist" here on KZbin they make experiments of mutual intelligibility. And you can see exactly that: the Spanish speaker almost works as an interpreter for French to Italian and Portuguese speakers.

[@rjfaber1991]

@@floatingsara Isn't that weird though? Italian and French are far more closely related to each other than either is to Spanish, so you would expect that to be reflected in mutual intelligibility. Of course the genetic relationship between languages doesn't explain everything; French has been far more heavily influenced by Germanic languages (Frankish) than Spanish (Gothic) has, and both have been more heavily influenced than Italian (both Gothic and Lombardic, but left less of a trace), and of course French has completely abandoned 'traditional' concepts of Romance phonology, while both Spanish and Italian retain them.

[@RMGringo2122]

@@rjfaber1991 i unequivocally disagree. French, as a romance language Is far more distant to italian, spanish and portuguese than the latter 3 are to each other. Spanish is my native language and I can easily converse with someone who is speaking only portuguese or italian. It may sound like anecdotal but the research overwhelmingly supports that fact. Italian, spanish and portuguese are sisters. French is a cousin and romanian is.... Well... The estranged one 😂😂

[@Keelsman]

Canadian bilingual anglophone here. Once met a charming polyglot Malawi speaker in the Italian region of Switzerland. We had a heck of a time communicating in English, until we figured out we both did well enough to get by in French and spent the rest of the evening happily gabbing away 😊

[@corystarkiller]

That's because your Quebecois accent ruins your English. The rest of Canada has just gotten used to understanding your English.

[@eduard-valentin.cazacu]

As romanians we understand 80-90% of italian but im sure they can't understand us at all

[@yehudacavalli3927]

Yup. I speak Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, some French.... can't grasp a whole phrase in Romanian. Just a few loose words. It does sound like a mix of Italian and Portuguese on the sounding, though. But then I can't make a meaning of it.

[@gianmarcoerrico8784]

I think it's also because we are racist towards Romanians (not that I am but Italian in general are racist especially nowadays) so we don't even try to understand you

[@sweetrabbit3115]

Also I will guess Romanian has borrowed a lot of words and idioms from the neighbouring slavic languages and from Hungarian, due to a historically large Hungarian population in Transylvania.

[@eduard-valentin.cazacu]

they speak their own language

[@eduard-valentin.cazacu]

but you might be right, so far i am aware, we do not have idioms or many words borrowed from hungary

[@lookash3048]

As a Polish native speaker who often meet other "Slavs" I can understand all northern Slavic languages with the order from the easiest to the hardest Slovak>Czech>Kashubian>Russian>Belarusian>Ukrainian. I can even watch TV in Czech or Russian and I know what's going on. In the other way it usually doesn't work only Slovaks sometimes have any idea what I speak in Polish. For Russians Polish doesn't sound even as Slavic language. They often ask if I speak Italian or something other. Polish is very conservative in case of grammar and innovative in case of vocabulary and phonology. I understand e.g. Russian word "корабль" because I met in old Polish word "korab" which means "boat" but Russian can't understand Polish "okręt" because it's new word invented by Polish people. The same works with sounds. I know that Russian л is cognate for Polish ł even if Russian "л" is a dark l and Polish "ł" sounds like English letter "w" because before IIWW Polish "ł" was the same as Russian л and I have met many elder people who speak in that way. From the other side Russians have no chance to know that.

[@kala_asi]

Hi from Russia! I've looked into Polish a while back. It definitely sounds Slavic to me, all the sibilants make it fairly easy to identify. I can't understand it on the fly, but I can get a pretty good idea of what is written. To add to your "boat" example, the standard Russian word for a duck is "utka", but some dialects apparently (though I haven't heard it myself) use "kaczka" instead.

[@fghsgh]

Slovak speaker here. We had a Polish student here some time ago (we live in Belgium) who came to learn Dutch, but we spoke Slovak with her and I was the one who had the most difficulties, but everyone else could understand eachother just fine. Russian is even harder for me.

[@leraost]

I moved recently to Poland from Russia and for me Polish sounds like a mix of Ukrainian and German :) I can understand almost everything written in Polish, while there are a lot of similarities in Slavs languages in general and due to my study of German, but the sound of Polish is quite difficult for me yet. I can understand general meaning of phrases but I think it is more about common sense of communication, and not the real understanding. I'm going to study Polish soon, hope to see more connections and differences :)

[@ploosqva]

I am Polish and I once met two people from Slovakia. One was from the north, near Poland, and communicated with ease. The other was from Bratislava, far from Poland. Neither of us understood the other and we had to resort to English

[@kyriljordanov2086]

Tomek Pluskiewicz Yes. This is my experience. Slovaks from Presov I know can understand Polish much better than my friends from Bratislava. My mom is from Moravia and sometimes western Slovaks sound like Moravians to me but Eastern Slovaks sound more like people from Podkarpatsko. Either way I always loved Slovak language.

[@imogenegiselle]

I have CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder) so I have hard time understanding even my native English. When I worked retail I noticed I seemed to have an easier time than other monolingual coworkers understanding Non English speaking customers. On one notable occasion a little girl had asked me "Que es esto?" and I answered her without realising she hadn't been speaking English until a coworker asked me if I speak Spanish. I do not.

[@er6730]

I wonder if it's because you listen very closely to intonation to figure out what people are saying.

[@lauragoreni3020]

@@er6730 no, because intonation is not the same in every language. They probably became very good at reading non-verbal clues.

[@siyacer]

Answered in English?

[@claudiaah6603]

I had a similar experience "talking" to a deaf person in Spain. I didn't speak Spanish then and the person had developed his own way of expressing himself. While nobody around him understood him (they were too focused on verbal communication), I guess we understood each other so much better because we both looked for non-verbal cues.

[@MuenchnerHai]

When we, a class of students from Germany, were in Florence (Italy) for our graduation trip we spent one evening at restaurant. During that we noticed that our classmate of Portuguese descent was talking lively to some strangers at the table next to ours. We asked him in astonishment if they happened to be Portuguese, too. But he replied that they were actually Italians and that it was surprisingly easy for them to understand one another...