mutually intelligible
adj1
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences Of two or more speech varieties, able to be understood by one another's speakers.
- This language, or mutually intelligible forms of it, is spoken by the coast-dwellers over an extensive area1860, Alfred R. Wallace, Notes of a Voyage to New Guinea, in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 30
- Another important point is that Homer recognises that the speech of Trojans and Greeks was mutually intelligible.1917, F. W. H. Migeod, The Racial Elements Concerned in the First Siege of Troy, in Man, Vol. 17
- Related terms
- mutual intelligibility