Editing Dialect (section)

=== Mutual intelligibility ===
One criterion, which is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of [[mutual intelligibility]]: two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages.<ref name="Comrie2018">{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lR9WDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24|title=The World's Major Languages|last=Comrie|first=Bernard|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|isbn=978-1-317-29049-0|editor=Bernard Comrie|pages=2–3|chapter=Introduction}}</ref> However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a [[dialect continuum]] (or dialect chain), which contains a sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties.<ref name="Comrie2018" />

Others have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of the intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects,<ref>{{cite journal |title=Taking taxonomy seriously in linguistics: Intelligibility as a criterion of demarcation between languages and dialects |first=Marco | last=Tamburelli |journal=Lingua |year=2021 |volume=256 |page=103068 |doi=10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103068 |s2cid=233800051 |url=https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutputs/taking-taxonomy-seriously-in-linguistics-intelligibility-as-a-criterion-of-demarcation-between-languages-and-dialects(7e404197-2caf-420c-84c5-258b31df3297).html |language=en}}</ref> though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the ''Language Survey Reference Guide'' of [[SIL International]], publishers of the ''[[Ethnologue]]'' and the [[registration authority]] for the [[ISO 639-3]] standard for [[language code]]s. They define a ''dialect cluster'' as a central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%<!-- So over 85 %, same language, but different dialects? Under 70 % > different languages? -->, the cluster is designated as a ''language''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Language Survey Reference Guide |given=Joseph Evans |surname=Grimes |publisher=SIL International |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-88312-609-7 |page=17 }}</ref>{{Clarify|date=August 2023}}