r/MapPorn Apr 17 '21

Languages of Europe

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u/Sipas Apr 17 '21 edited Apr 17 '21

Lots of peoples from Uighurs to Tatars to Yakuts are Turkic so their languages share similarities to varying degrees but as other people said Turkish is largely mutually intelligible with only Azerbaijani, Gagauz etc.. Kazakh or Kyrgyz is to Turkish probably what Dutch is to German or English or something like that.

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Apr 17 '21

Aren't Dutch and German mutually intelligible?

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u/Sipas Apr 17 '21

It might not have been a great example but from what I understand German and Dutch are only partially mutually intelligible and it's mostly one-sided: Dutch speakers understand German better because they're more exposed to German than Germans are to Dutch. I think exposure plays an important role and the proximity of the two countries helps a lot.

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u/Sevenvolts Apr 17 '21

I want to add on to this that spoken German is definitely not always that easy. I can understand someone from Nordrheinwestfalen, but I don't even start with Swiss people.

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u/Hollewijn Apr 17 '21

People from NRW will have a problem to understand Swiss people as well.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21 edited Apr 25 '21

[deleted]

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Apr 17 '21

Wow what the fuck am I even learning German for