Similar words consist of similar sounds

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Funknet 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 
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. Komi and Udmurt should be called closely related Finno-Ugric languages. What is your opinion? Looking forward to hearing from you to yutamb at mail.ru directly. Yours most sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev