What Are the Most Similar Languages?

There are thousands of languages in the world. According to SIL International, a leading body in the documentation of the world’s languages, there are over 7000 languages in use today. As language exists on a continuum rather than in convenient little boxes, it is difficult to delineate where one language ends and another begins. This dynamic has also led to languages being split up into two or more languages, and as a result, there are languages today that are so similar they are mutually intelligible.

Here are some of the most similar languages in use today.

For most of the 20th century, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia were part of a single country called Yugoslavia where the official language was Serbo-Croatian. In the 90’s the country was ripped apart by civil war in which ethnic genocide took place. Yugoslavia ended up being split along ethnic lines and the result was the dissolution of the country and the rise of its constituent territories as independent states.

The language, with its dialects, was broken up too, and each dialect became regarded as a separate language. Today the languages are almost identical in grammar and vocabulary, and the biggest difference between them is the fact that they use different alphabets. All four languages can be written with the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, but the Serbians prefer to use Cyrillic while the Croatians prefer the Latin alphabet.

From a linguistic perspective, the languages should be considered different dialects of the same language, but, as is often the case, politics has determined otherwise.  

Xhosa and Zulu

South Africa is known for its ethnic and linguistic diversity. Some of the languages and ethnicities are so close, however, that many of the linguistic variations are mutually intelligible to the point where one could argue that they are different dialects of the same language. This argument is apparent in the case between Zulu and Xhosa, which represent South Africa’s two largest mother tongue language groups respectively. Of great importance is the cultural distinction between the two groups of people who see themselves as being different enough from one another to warrant their languages being classified as separate languages rather than dialects of the same language. 

The Xhosa homeland is in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, while the Zulu homeland lies to the northeast in KwaZulu Natal Province. The process that saw these two languages evolve separately began around the 18th century, and when missionaries arrived, classification systems were needed. 

Local chiefdoms and clans covered many geographical areas and as areas changed from the northern and southern parts of the eastern South African coast, so did the dialects that were spoken. Missionaries grouped dialects together and codified them into two distinct language groups with enough difference that they ended up being classified as two separate languages. Differences were further entrenched during the 19th century with apartheid, which sought to separate the two groups of people, along with their language. 

Nevertheless, Xhosa and Zulu share around 80% of their vocabulary today, and speakers of each language have no problems understanding each other. 

Despite the current differences in the world of politics, the people of Ukraine and Belarus share significant similarities in the way they speak. Belarusian and Ukrainian are separate languages but they share so many things in common that they could almost be considered dialects of the same language. Both languages evolved from Ruthenian, and underwent rapid growth in the 19th and early 18th centuries. From 1933, both languages were brought closer to Russian in attempts at standardization.

Today, the two languages share very similar grammar, and around 84% of the vocabulary is the same.

Conclusion

Of course, there are many other languages around the world that are similar. Russian and Bulgarian share much in common, while Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. The mention of these languages, however, only scratches the tip of the linguistic iceberg. 

There are vast numbers of languages, some well-known, and others that have barely been heard of, that share so much in common that their speakers have no problems communicating with each other in their respective tongues.