A pair of languages is said to be mutually intelligible if speakers of one language can readily understand the other language. A group of languages is said to be mutually intelligible if all the language-pairs in the group are mutually intelligible.
It usually requires considerable time and effort to learn or understand a new language. However, many languages are similar in their grammar and vocabulary to other related languages. Speakers of these languages find it relatively easy to read or to understand the related language or languages. However, the intelligibility among languages can vary from individuals, according to their knowledge of their own tongue, their interests on other cultures, their broadmindedness and other factors.
In linguistics, mutualintelligibility is a property exhibited by two or more distinct languages when speakers of one or more of the languages can readily understand at least one or more of the other language(s) without intentional study or extraordinary effort.
Mutuallyintelligibility can be asymmetric between the languages, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first.
Russian and Polish are largely not mutuallyintelligible but Ukrainian is mutuallyintelligible to some degree to both, being believed by many to be an intermediary form in the dialect continuum.
An opposite example is the case of the Chinese language whose variations are often considered dialects and not languages despite their mutual unintelligibility because they share a common literary standard and common body of literature.
Macedonian, although mutuallyintelligible with Bulgarian and often considered to be a Bulgarian dialect, is touted in Republic of Macedonia as a language in its own right.
Another problem occurs in the case of diglossia, used to describe a situation where, in a given society, there are two closely-related languages, one of high-prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low-prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue.
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