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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">Dear Corpora
members, I am sure it is more usual to take into account the point of
lexical similarity, i.e. the number of common words, rather than the sound
picture similarity, though similar words consist of similar sounds. How is the
similarity of words judged? Unfortunately, it is quite possible that 80%
lexical similarity which would allow mutual intelligibility is never the case.
How is it possible to measure the mutual intelligibility of words if not by
similar sounds. How many % of words which are not similar would break
it? One could also ask how one defines the border of "mutual
intelligibility." In this <BR>case, the decision of dialect vs.
language or one linguistic object vs. the other would be based purely on
the basis of lexical similarity, let us forget about the phonetic method
or any other methods, they are invented. The problem that we discussed
in our article on Mansi (Vogul) and Hungarian was: how many similar words there
should be to consider a language to belong to the other one. Mansi and Hungarian
are believed to be very closely related, though they have only 34% of the
similar words of the Swadesh list. It means that 66% of the words are not
similar in Mansi and Hungarian. Naturally, a speaker of Mansi does not
understand a speaker of Hungarian. It is a proved fact. I think in actual Mansi
corpus there are less similar words. Nevertheless, Finno-Ugrists believe Mansi
and Hungarian are close related. This is why, Mansi and Hungarian are put
together into the Ugric subgroup of the Finno-Ugric language family. Hanty is
also put there, though it has only 27% of common words with Hungarian. I think
linguists should decide when we must consider two languages to be closely
related, that is, to establish the threshold of mutual intelligibility. Surely,
it is not 27% or even 34%, as the case with Hanty, Mansi and Hungarian. In my
opinion, it should not be less than 70%. Only Komi and Udmurt have 70% of common
words. Therefore, their sound pictures should consist of some 70% similar
sounds. Komi and Udmurt should be called closely related Finno-Ugric
languages. What is your opinion? Looking forward to hearing from you to <A
href="mailto:yutamb@mail.ru">yutamb@mail.ru</A> directly. Yours most sincerely
Yuri Tambovtsev</FONT><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>