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Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_int

Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Slavic Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible > Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

alisonatwork 3y ago
The Mandarin used in Taiwan and the Mandarin used in China are both standard Chinese and mutually intelligible.
- foobarian 3y ago
  IIRC Cantonese and Mandarin are the two big language groups that are not mutually intelligible.
  - gabagaul 3y ago
    But Cantonese isn’t spoken in Taiwan except a handful of Hong Kong immigrants. What’s your point?
    - throwaway2990 3y ago
      But they do speak Taiwanese in Taiwan which you wouldn’t understand if you only spoke mandarin.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        > they do speak Taiwanese Do you mean Hakka and/or Hokkien? Hokkien which is primarily spoken across the strait in Fujian. Hakka is primarily spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi. Xi himself was the Party head of Fujian for most of his career and Xi's father was the Party head of Guangdong when he was rehabilitated in the Deng Xiaoping era. This is why most manufacturing in China ended up coastal Southern China - most Chinese Taiwanese trace their heritage to there barely 2-5 generations ago at most. The younger generation (post-1989) in Taiwan speaks and understands Mandarin.
        alisonatwork 3y ago
        This whole thread has a bunch of answers which are confusing the topic. The issue is why would Taiwanese businesses care about the China market? Aside from the fact that the China market is massive, there is a simple answer: Taiwan and China have the same business language, and that is Standard Chinese aka Mandarin. Yes, lots of Taiwanese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin, and are not mutually intelligible with it. And lots of Chinese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin and are not mutually intelligible with it. And even some variants of Mandarin itself are not mutually intelligible. But - outside of Cantonese in HK and Macau - none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan, so it's an interesting side note but doesn't change the point. All that said, aside from the Chinese market being massive, and the common language being convenient, there is a much bigger elephant in the room that explains why Taiwanese companies might not have a fun time doing business in China: politics. It doesn't matter how much money Taiwanese companies might want to make if the CCP can threaten to turn off the spigot any time they want to influence Taiwanese politics, which unfortunately nowadays appears to be all the time. Sure, it's leaving a lot of money on the table, but doing business with Japan or the US or other countries that aren't run as a single party dictatorship whose leadership has a stated platform of dismantling your own government might be a less risky option.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        > none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan 我同意。 I was just trying to dig into what OP meant by "Taiwanese" as a language. It's always going to be Mandarin for anything commercial. That said, you can't deny the benefit the Hakka and Hokkien diaspora provided to China's manufacturing capacity - it was diaspora Chinese from Thailand (CP Group was the first foreign private company to incorporate in China), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Taiwan had on PRC's catchup.
        throwaway2990 3y ago
        In Taiwan it’s called Taiwanese. It’s similar to Hokkien which is why it’s often referred to as Taiwanese Hokkien. But it’s not 1:1. And people outside of Taipei will assume you speak it and understand it.
  - 10hr 3y ago
    you're correct. My taiwan colleagues visit HK, they request "no cantonese please"
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  Outside of Taipei, a lot of people speak Taiwanese. (While they also speak mandarin if you don’t know Taiwanese you can only understand a bit of what people say)
0x38B 3y ago
Nearly every Ukrainian understands Russian, but many Russians would only understand the gist of what Ukrainians are saying, because the languages only share about 60% of their vocabulary. A lot of common, everyday words differ in Ukrainian and or arise from different roots (e.g Polish).
- beebeepka 3y ago
  Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no? Now I wonder if this number, provided it is a real one, went up or down during the last 30 years. I would bet on lower but it's only a gut feeling.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no? It's plenty for communication, not plenty for a conversation. (It's also a mirror for colonialism, by the way, where the occupied speak the language of the occupier, but the occupiers can't be arsed to learn the language of the occupied.)
    - mabster 3y ago
      It's not even necessarily enough for communication. With the Pareto curve on word commonality it's really quick to get high percentages of vocabulary. But it's the words you don't know on a sentence that are usually the important ones.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      You are right. 60% is nothing, especially given the political situation /s can't even talk about chips and language without being attacked by the crew
      - MiguelX413 3y ago
        • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035 • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267 • https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783 https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783 It's a linguistic topic. Good luck trying to talk with Germans as an English speaker.
dheera 3y ago
> Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible Except for some slang words which nobody would use in business anyway, Sichuanese is largely intelligible to native Mandarin Chinese speakers if spoken slowly and repeated a couple times. People from Sichuan can also speak standard Mandarin. The written language is identical. As for Taiwan and China it is even less an issue. The very few words that are different may be the source for some humor sometimes but that's it. It's kind of like how British people say "lift" and Americans say "elevator". If you're not brain-dead you'll figure it out pretty quickly and maybe crack a joke or two about it. When you see a sign that says "lift" you don't panic and say that it's not intelligible, you can make some sense of the word. It's a non-issue in practical terms.
iskander 3y ago
I was born in Kiev and spoke Russian at home. Can barely understand Ukrainian unless it's spoken slowly by a native Russian speaker. I can get the gist of what Zelensky is saying in an interview but can pretty much never understand native Ukrainian speakers. I think there's also a gradient of dialects and accents West to East, so I'm sure you can find some Ukrainian villager I would understand better but in general they're not mutually intelligible (to me).
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Wow. Did you attend Russian language-only schools when growing up? Is this common in your generation?
  - iskander 3y ago
    Moved to the US as a kid (by way of Estonia and then Italy), went to a year of Russian language "transitional" school here. So don't have any insight on the Ukrainian school experience.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aswanson 3y ago
How close is mandarin to Cantonese?
- tmtvl 3y ago
  About as close as English and Swedish.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  I have warm memories as a kid going with my Mom to the daily market, and watching people communicating by furiously writing words in their hands, in addition to the simplified tradespeak between the language groups. It's an interesting thing, having both a shared writing system and mutually unintelligible spoken language!
numpad0 3y ago
Maybe it should be more recognized that what the quote "a language is a dialect with an army" means is that borders of nations don't coincide with borders for languages, or put more simply, it has such two meanings that, there are languages that are realistically just weird accents on one another, and one "language" that are realistically two or more. I have some confidence with dialects of my primary language(not Chinese) within ~150mi of where I am; beyond that, mutual intelligibility with local dialects isn't guaranteed. Yet, those dialects are rarely considered(including by speakers) to be separate from the standard. They're just local accents. That aren't even intelligible to city dwellers.
datameta 3y ago
To me, cantonese may as well be a separate language from Beijing Mandarin.
- TrickyRick 3y ago
  I mean it is? "Cantonese (traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: Gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdùng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese
  - datameta 3y ago
    I simply left room for error.

alisonatwork 3y ago

The Mandarin used in Taiwan and the Mandarin used in China are both standard Chinese and mutually intelligible.

foobarian 3y ago
IIRC Cantonese and Mandarin are the two big language groups that are not mutually intelligible.
- gabagaul 3y ago
  But Cantonese isn’t spoken in Taiwan except a handful of Hong Kong immigrants. What’s your point?
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    But they do speak Taiwanese in Taiwan which you wouldn’t understand if you only spoke mandarin.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      > they do speak Taiwanese Do you mean Hakka and/or Hokkien? Hokkien which is primarily spoken across the strait in Fujian. Hakka is primarily spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi. Xi himself was the Party head of Fujian for most of his career and Xi's father was the Party head of Guangdong when he was rehabilitated in the Deng Xiaoping era. This is why most manufacturing in China ended up coastal Southern China - most Chinese Taiwanese trace their heritage to there barely 2-5 generations ago at most. The younger generation (post-1989) in Taiwan speaks and understands Mandarin.
      - alisonatwork 3y ago
        This whole thread has a bunch of answers which are confusing the topic. The issue is why would Taiwanese businesses care about the China market? Aside from the fact that the China market is massive, there is a simple answer: Taiwan and China have the same business language, and that is Standard Chinese aka Mandarin. Yes, lots of Taiwanese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin, and are not mutually intelligible with it. And lots of Chinese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin and are not mutually intelligible with it. And even some variants of Mandarin itself are not mutually intelligible. But - outside of Cantonese in HK and Macau - none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan, so it's an interesting side note but doesn't change the point. All that said, aside from the Chinese market being massive, and the common language being convenient, there is a much bigger elephant in the room that explains why Taiwanese companies might not have a fun time doing business in China: politics. It doesn't matter how much money Taiwanese companies might want to make if the CCP can threaten to turn off the spigot any time they want to influence Taiwanese politics, which unfortunately nowadays appears to be all the time. Sure, it's leaving a lot of money on the table, but doing business with Japan or the US or other countries that aren't run as a single party dictatorship whose leadership has a stated platform of dismantling your own government might be a less risky option.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        > none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan 我同意。 I was just trying to dig into what OP meant by "Taiwanese" as a language. It's always going to be Mandarin for anything commercial. That said, you can't deny the benefit the Hakka and Hokkien diaspora provided to China's manufacturing capacity - it was diaspora Chinese from Thailand (CP Group was the first foreign private company to incorporate in China), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Taiwan had on PRC's catchup.
        throwaway2990 3y ago
        In Taiwan it’s called Taiwanese. It’s similar to Hokkien which is why it’s often referred to as Taiwanese Hokkien. But it’s not 1:1. And people outside of Taipei will assume you speak it and understand it.
- 10hr 3y ago
  you're correct. My taiwan colleagues visit HK, they request "no cantonese please"
throwaway2990 3y ago
Outside of Taipei, a lot of people speak Taiwanese. (While they also speak mandarin if you don’t know Taiwanese you can only understand a bit of what people say)

0x38B 3y ago

Nearly every Ukrainian understands Russian, but many Russians would only understand the gist of what Ukrainians are saying, because the languages only share about 60% of their vocabulary. A lot of common, everyday words differ in Ukrainian and or arise from different roots (e.g Polish).

beebeepka 3y ago
Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no? Now I wonder if this number, provided it is a real one, went up or down during the last 30 years. I would bet on lower but it's only a gut feeling.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no? It's plenty for communication, not plenty for a conversation. (It's also a mirror for colonialism, by the way, where the occupied speak the language of the occupier, but the occupiers can't be arsed to learn the language of the occupied.)
  - mabster 3y ago
    It's not even necessarily enough for communication. With the Pareto curve on word commonality it's really quick to get high percentages of vocabulary. But it's the words you don't know on a sentence that are usually the important ones.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    You are right. 60% is nothing, especially given the political situation /s can't even talk about chips and language without being attacked by the crew
    - MiguelX413 3y ago
      • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035 • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267 • https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783 https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783 It's a linguistic topic. Good luck trying to talk with Germans as an English speaker.

dheera 3y ago

> Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible Except for some slang words which nobody would use in business anyway, Sichuanese is largely intelligible to native Mandarin Chinese speakers if spoken slowly and repeated a couple times. People from Sichuan can also speak standard Mandarin. The written language is identical. As for Taiwan and China it is even less an issue. The very few words that are different may be the source for some humor sometimes but that's it. It's kind of like how British people say "lift" and Americans say "elevator". If you're not brain-dead you'll figure it out pretty quickly and maybe crack a joke or two about it. When you see a sign that says "lift" you don't panic and say that it's not intelligible, you can make some sense of the word. It's a non-issue in practical terms.

iskander 3y ago

I was born in Kiev and spoke Russian at home. Can barely understand Ukrainian unless it's spoken slowly by a native Russian speaker. I can get the gist of what Zelensky is saying in an interview but can pretty much never understand native Ukrainian speakers. I think there's also a gradient of dialects and accents West to East, so I'm sure you can find some Ukrainian villager I would understand better but in general they're not mutually intelligible (to me).

throwaway2037 3y ago
Wow. Did you attend Russian language-only schools when growing up? Is this common in your generation?
- iskander 3y ago
  Moved to the US as a kid (by way of Estonia and then Italy), went to a year of Russian language "transitional" school here. So don't have any insight on the Ukrainian school experience.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aswanson 3y ago

How close is mandarin to Cantonese?

tmtvl 3y ago
About as close as English and Swedish.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Baeocystin 3y ago
I have warm memories as a kid going with my Mom to the daily market, and watching people communicating by furiously writing words in their hands, in addition to the simplified tradespeak between the language groups. It's an interesting thing, having both a shared writing system and mutually unintelligible spoken language!

numpad0 3y ago

Maybe it should be more recognized that what the quote "a language is a dialect with an army" means is that borders of nations don't coincide with borders for languages, or put more simply, it has such two meanings that, there are languages that are realistically just weird accents on one another, and one "language" that are realistically two or more. I have some confidence with dialects of my primary language(not Chinese) within ~150mi of where I am; beyond that, mutual intelligibility with local dialects isn't guaranteed. Yet, those dialects are rarely considered(including by speakers) to be separate from the standard. They're just local accents. That aren't even intelligible to city dwellers.

datameta 3y ago

To me, cantonese may as well be a separate language from Beijing Mandarin.

TrickyRick 3y ago
I mean it is? "Cantonese (traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: Gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdùng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese
- datameta 3y ago
  I simply left room for error.