Abstract
In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three West Slavic (Czech, Slovak and Polish) and three South Slavic languages (Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian). Three different methods were used: a word translation task, a cloze test and a picture task. The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West Slavic languages are more intelligible among speakers of West Slavic languages than among those of South Slavic languages. We found an asymmetry in Croatian-Slovene intelligibility, whereby Slovene speakers can understand written and spoken Croatian better than vice versa. Finally, we compared the three methods and found that the word translation task and the cloze test give very similar results, while the results of the picture task are somewhat unreliable.
Highlights
A Slovak tourist on a holiday in Croatia who wants to communicate with the locals has several options at hand (Backus, Marácz, and ten Thije 2011)
There is a clear distinction between the West and the South Slavic language cluster, e.g. speakers of Croatian could translate more words from Slovene and Bulgarian than they could from Czech, Slovak or Polish
The Croatian-Slovak language combination was the next to follow. Such a high level of mutual intelligibility between Czech and Slovak indicates that receptive multilingualism is definitely possible, and since we already know that this method of communicating is practically the norm between the speakers of those languages, we conclude that the near-ceiling effect we found is valid
Summary
A Slovak tourist on a holiday in Croatia who wants to communicate with the locals has several options at hand (Backus, Marácz, and ten Thije 2011). According to a report by the European Commission (Special Eurobarometer 243), only 38 % of EU citizens can speak English well enough to be able to hold a conversation, so the odds are that our tourist cannot really communicate that way She could perhaps try German, which is commonly taught in schools in both Slovakia and Croatia, so it might perhaps qualify as some sort of a regional lingua franca. The odds of that working are even slimmer, since only 11 % of EU citizens report they are able to have a conversation in German (Special Eurobarometer 243) If she could speak a bit of Croatian, perhaps another option might be code-switching, i.e. speaking a bit of both languages, in the hope that she could create a mix that would enable mutual intelligibility. Since her Croatian is limited to the two or three most basic phrases, this option is out
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