We measured mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages inEurope. Intelligibility was determined for all 70 language combinations using the same uniform methodology (a cloze test)... Show moreWe measured mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages inEurope. Intelligibility was determined for all 70 language combinations using the same uniform methodology (a cloze test). We analysed the results of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries. Lexical, phonological, orthographic, morphological and syntactic distances were computed as linguistic variables. We also quantified non-linguistic variables (e.g. exposure, attitudes towards the test languages). Using stepwise regression analysis the importance of linguistic and non-linguistic predictors for the mutual intelligibility in the 70 language pairs was assessed. Exposure to the test language was the most important variable, overriding all other variables. Then, limiting the analysis to the prediction of inherent intelligibility, we analysed the results for a subset of listeners with no or little previous exposure to the test language. Linguistic distances, especially lexical distance, now explain a substantial part of the variance. Show less
Gooskens, C.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Golubović, J.; Schüppert, A.; Swarte, F.; Voigt, S. 2017
By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language... Show moreBy means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries where the test languages are spoken. Next, we present the data from a sub-group of listeners who had not learned the test language and had had minimal exposure to it. This allows us to investigate how well the listeners understand the test language on the basis of structural similarities between their own language and the test languages. Finally, we compare the results of the two data sets to the traditional genealogic characterisation of the three language groups. We expect the intelligibility results from the second group of listeners who had had minimal exposure to the test language to be a better reflection of the genealogical characterisation than the results from the larger group who had sometimes been exposed to the test language or had learned it at school. Show less
Gooskens, C.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Golubović, J.; Schüppert, A.; Swarte, F.; Voigt, S. 2017
By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language... Show moreBy means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries where the test languages are spoken. Next, we present the data from a sub-group of listeners who had not learned the test language and had had minimal exposure to it. This allows us to investigate how well the listeners understand the test language on the basis of structural similarities between their own language and the test languages. Finally, we compare the results of the two data sets to the traditional genealogic characterisation of the three language groups. We expect the intelligibility results from the second group of listeners who had had minimal exposure to the test language to be a better reflection of the genealogical characterisation than the results from the larger group who had sometimes been exposed to the test language or had learned it at school. Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
We measured F1, F2 and duration of ten English monophthongs produced by American native speakers and by Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Hungarian and Chinese L2 speakers. We hypothesized that (i... Show moreWe measured F1, F2 and duration of ten English monophthongs produced by American native speakers and by Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Hungarian and Chinese L2 speakers. We hypothesized that (i) L2 speakers would approximate the English vowels more closely as the phonological distance between the L2 and English is smaller, and (ii) English vowels of L2 speaker groups will be more similar as the L2s are closer to one another. Comparison of acoustic vowel diagrams and Linear Discriminant Analyses (LDA) confirm the hypotheses, with one exception: Dutch speakers deviate more from L1 English than the Scandinavian groups. The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit was convincingly simulated by the LDA. Show less
