> From: Martin Duerst [mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp] > The term "mutually intellegible" has been used a lot, in my > understanding > implicitly always with a binary yes/no implication. > > In my experience, I understand "mutally intellegible" more in terms > of time... > Was/is there any consideration about such a scale when defining > languages e.g. for ISO-639-3? Any language variety can be learned, given sufficient time and a sufficient level of interest and desire. There is, indeed, a gray scale here: it takes limited effort for a machinist from Maine to learn to communicate with his floor manager from South Carolina, and he's probably fairly motivated to do so; he's far less likely to learn to communicate with a Frisian (in Frisian) that asks him for directions on a street corner. Somewhat correlated to the amount of time and ease in learning (though not necessarily motivations) variety A by a native speaker of variety B is the feasibility at devising an orthography and being able to produce literature that can be understood *readily and effectively* by speakers from both A and B. Of course, the skill of reading involves its own learning process, but depending on the distance between A and B there will be some additional learning cost on the part of A or B (or both) to learn to read a common literature. (Of course, with audio publications, there is a direct correlation between time/ease of learning and how readily and effectively a publication intended for both can be understood.) Now, obviously when talking about decisions that impacted ISO 639-3, it is relevant to consider decisions made in preparation of Ethnologue. Here, we should distinguish between developed languages with established literary traditions and undeveloped languages with no literary tradition (or traditions that died out some generations ago). For the latter, an ideal development methodology strikes a balance between (a) clumping together many varieties to reduce the number of separate development projects involved, and (b) ensuring that literature really is effectively understood without costly and de-motivating barriers in literacy instruction. There are also other factors: e.g. speakers of B may understand A quite well, but also have very negative attitudes; and other social, political or economic factors may be significant. These are the kinds of considerations that have often been involved when input has been provided into Ethnologue, though I can't speak to how well and appropriately they have been evaluated in individual cases or how consistently across cases. For the former, the language identities are generally a given, and when changes do occur, they are very often driven by socio-linguistic factors rather than purely linguistic ones (the analogy would be how motivated B would be to learn A rather than how long would it take). Btw, an implication of the above is that it is mutual *non*-intelligibility that is generally most interesting. (If A is intelligible to speakers of B, they can potentially use resources prepared for A, whether or not B is intelligible to speakers of A. But if neither can understand resources prepared for the other, then separate resources are likely required.) Peter _______________________________________________ Ltru mailing list Ltru at ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
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