The way I see it, if one understands another language, it’s because of similarities in syntax, grammar, etymology or what not. But a similarity is by definition bidirectional, is it not? Is the idea that some languages understand other better than they are themselves understood a lie?
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For example you can have a grammar structur that is very basic in one language but complex in the other but they share the same basic rules. So the side with the complex grammar understands the one with the basic grammar but the side with basic grammar doesnt understand the more complex grammar. They will still understand some things but it will be much harder.
Like you have two languages that both use the same word order. But when talking about the past the more complex one changes the word order while the basic one just adds a word that says this happend in the past. You might not say a sentence in that way in the language with diffrent word order but when they will understand otherway around they wont understand unless they know that this diffrent word order means it happend in the past.
One factor is “cultural flux direction”. As a Norwegian, I can understand Swedish very well, but Swedes do not generally understand Norwegian well to the same level. The languages have many similarities, but also many notable differences. But because Sweden always has been a cultural big brother to Norway, with a lot more and better books, movies and TV shows produced, Norwegians have consumed much more Swedish language than the other way around. And that kind of mechanism quickly becomes self-reinforcing.
I image it is easy for the same thing to happen in other parts, with other similar languages.
The ability for separate languages to be understood is called “mutual intelligibility,” and when one language understands the other more, it’s called “asymmetric intelligibility.”
This can happen because one language might have formed from another. Afrikaans is sort of a simplified Dutch, or at least started that way. Dutch speakers have an easier time understanding Afrikaans than vice versa because Dutch has all the same rules as Afrikaans *plus more*.
To use another, hypothetical example: let’s say language A and language B are similar and have a lot of overlap, but language A has a mix of gendered nouns (like in Spanish, French, etc) and non gendered nouns (like in English). Language B only has gendered nouns. Language A speakers will have an easier time understanding language B because they have the concepts of gendered nouns already, but language B won’t understand the non gendered parts of language A.
I’m French and this phenomenon is very obvious with Canadian French. Canadian French speakers are native level fluent in “France French”, but when they’re having an informal conversation between themselves, I can barely understand a word here and there. And yet they are speaking a language that is very similar to mine.
every swiss german understands german perfectly, no german understands swis german unless they live there for several years.
I’m German and I can’t even understand the deepest bavarian dialect, but I’m pretty sure they understand me perfect.
It could be as simple as subset. If language b is a subset of language a, then everything in language b is a legitimate part of language a. But the reverse is not true.
In addition to cultural reasons (speakers of language A being more exposed to language B than vice versa), a big factor is phonetics. Portuguese people understand spanish, because spanish is open sounding, it’s read exactly as it’s written. Spanish people will understand written portuguese, but not spoken, because it sounds so different to them, and uses sounds they just don’t have in their language.
It’s a lot about practice and which language group imports more content from the other.
If one group imports television/movies from the other the speaker will be much more used to the other language.
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