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Linguistic distance

Linguistic distance is the measure of how different one language (or dialect) is from another. Although they lack a uniform approach to quantifying linguistic distance between languages, linguists apply the concept to a variety of linguistic contexts, such as second-language acquisition, historical linguistics, language-based conflicts, and the effects of language differences on trade. The proposed measures used for linguistic distance reflect varying understandings of the term itself. One approach is based on mutual intelligibility, i.e. the ability of speakers of one language to understand the other language. With this, the higher the linguistic distance, the lower is the level of mutual intelligibility. Because cognate words play an important role in mutual intelligibility between languages, these figure prominently in such analyses. The higher the percentage of cognate (as opposed to non-cognate) words in the two languages with respect to one another, the lower is their linguistic distance. Also, the greater the degree of grammatical relatedness (i.e. the cognates mean roughly similar things) and lexical relatedness (i.e. the cognates are easily discernible as related words), the lower is the linguistic distance. As an example of this, the Hindustani word pānch is grammatically identical and lexically similar (but non-identical) to its cognate Punjabi and Persian word panj as well as to the lexically dissimilar but still grammatically identical Greek pent- and English five. As another example, the English dish and German tisch 'table' are lexically (phonologically) similar but grammatically (semantically) dissimilar. Cognates in related languages can even be identical in form, but semantically distinct, such as caldo and largo, which mean respectively 'hot' and 'wide' in Italian but 'broth, soup' and 'long' in Spanish. Using a statistical approach (called lexicostatistics) by comparing each language's mass of words, distances can be calculated between them; in technical terms, what is calculated is the Levenshtein distance.

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Related concepts (2)
Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first.
Dialect
Dialect (from Latin dialectus, dialectos, from the Ancient Greek word διάλεκτος, 'discourse', from διά, 'through' and λέγω, 'I speak') can refer to two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. Under this definition, the dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible, especially if geographically close to one another in a dialect continuum.

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