How intelligible are Turkish and Azeri? I know they are close enough, but I wonder if it similar to Scottish English vs. American English or farther, more like Spanish vs. Portuguese?

cc @nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

  • GroteStreet 🦘@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    I really don’t know the Scottish English

    If you think American v. British are at 80-90%, Scottish is around 30% and that’s being generous 🙂

    • syd@lemy.lol
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      I learned English from mostly American sources and I can barely understand Brit English :) It’s not just words, the accent makes it harder too. I guess I would never understand Scottish one then.

      The Turkish/Azeri situation is close to this, at least for me.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        8 months ago

        For a native speaker British and American English are probably at least 99% intelligible for the main dialects, though there are some regional accents that are less. Scottish is usually mostly intelligible but I’ve heard some Irish ones where I can only catch a few words here and there.

        • Jojo@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          8 months ago

          There’s I think a Tom Scott video where he interviewed someone with just the absolute thickest accent in a little Irish village, and he needed a translator from the village to mediate.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      The challenge with Scottish English is mostly just about learning how they modify their pronunciation of English. Without having it explained to me, I was able to go from not understanding Limmy’s Show, to understanding nearly all of it, simply by watching a lot of episodes and getting used to his accent.