Onderlinge verstaanbaarheid tussen Noord- en Westerlauwers Fries

Abstract

This is a study of the mutual intelligibility between speakers of North and West Frisian: two minority languages with a mutual ancestor language. The study looks at the intelligibility of auditory and written material and concludes that the mean degree of intelligibility between speakers of the two languages is 38%, which might be enough for basic communication, but is rather low compared to intelligibility levels between other pairs of closely related languages. Our study thus indicates that a close genetic relationship between languages does not necessarily predict levels of mutual intelligibility.