What languages are similar to each other?

For instance, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian are so similar that they’re often lumped together as one language: Serbo-Croatian. According to writer and linguist Robert Lindsay, Serbo-Croatian is also partially mutually intelligible with other languages, most notably Macedonian.

Are all languages in the world sound similar?

Most Languages Use the Same Sounds for Certain Words, Study Finds. As different as the world’s languages may seem to the untrained ear, some concepts share the same sounds even in languages that are completely unrelated, a new study finds. Body parts also had strong relationships to certain sounds.

How similar are French and Catalan?

Catalan is sometimes more similar to French than Spanish However, despite mostly being spoken in present-day Spain, Catalan actually shares many more similarities with the language of neighbouring France.

How are the sounds in a language related to each other?

There are also specific ways the sounds in a language can be put together in a word. In linguistics this is called ‘phonotactics’. Words in some languages always finish with a vowel, while words in other languages must not have two consonants together.

How do languages differ from one another?

They may use different sounds, they may make words in different ways, they may put words together to form a sentence in different ways, and that’s just for starters! When we talk about a ‘language’ we mean the act of speaking, writing or signing.

What is the closest language to English?

Flemish, Dutch, Frisian and Danish are the closest languages to English in terms of sounds and pronounciation of words etc. The West Flemish dialect of Belgian Dutch is particularly close to English in terms of sounds and Germanic vocabulary.

Why is there so much variety of sound in the world?

Although awareness of such phenomena increases with every new foreign language learnt, only a few realise just how much variety of sound exists in the languages of the world. The differences in sound are the result of different manners of articulation – the way they are pronounced.