What is Mutual intelligibility?
{{No sources}} '''Mutual intelligibility''' is where the speakers of one [[language]] can understand another language because they are alike. This is sometimes (but not always) used to decide whether they are different [[Language|languages]] or different [[Dialect|dialects]]. There are noticeable differences in [[accent]], [[vocabulary]], and [[Orthography|spelling]] between [[British English|British]] and [[American English|General American English]], but speakers can largely understand each other without serious problems. These dialects are therefore '''mutually intelligible'''. Sometimes, even different languages can be mutually intelligible. [[Hindi]] and [[Urdu]] are called different languages, but speakers of both languages can largely understand each other if they are using everyday language. This is because the two languages used to be dialects of [[Hindustani language|Hindustani]], the official language of [[British India]] until [[India]] became [[Independence|independent]]. Since the two languages are so alike, they are sometimes called together as [[Hindi-Urdu]]. Also, dialects of a certain language can sometimes be mutually unintelligible. [[Chinese languages|Chinese]], for example, has hundreds of different dialects, and many [[Native speaker|native speakers]] of those dialects cannot understand each other without knowing the other's dialect. For example, the local dialects of [[Beijing]] and [[Shanghai]] are [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] and [[Wu Chinese|Shanghainese]], or ''Wu Chinese'', respectively.{{cn|date=December 2024}} If natives from each of these cities were to talk to each other in their native dialects, they would not understand each other. This is because they are too different from each other. This is why the governments of China and [[Taiwan]] want their citizens to speak [[Standard Mandarin]] in public so that there can be a spoken dialect of Chinese everyone can understand. While the spoken dialects are mutually unintelligible, they all use the same written code, [[Chinese ch