A review on various testing methods for measuring mutual intelligibility between languages and dialects Case review: mutual intelligibility of Southern and Central Kurdish by Mirmokri (1399)

Mutual intelligibility occurs when a listener of language variety (A) understands a speaker of another language variety (B) without any training or previous contact or any intentional decision or vice versa. This level of understanding, often, is not complete or symmetric, but it is different for each pair of varieties. The closely related languages and dialects of a same language are the ones that are expected to have mutual intelligibility. If two speakers from two language varieties understand each other while each of them use their own languages, they are in receptive multilingualism condition. Non-Iranian studies have measured the level of intelligibility between dialects and closely related languages by means of some tests and questionnaires. In this writing, we review common methods for measuring mutual intelligibility mentioned in Mirmokri’s research under title “mutual intelligibility between Kurdish Southern and Central dialects in Iran”. Then we introduce different aspects of these kinds of researches, advantages and disadvantages of the methods used by reviewed research. Reviewing the methods and principles show that the research is methodologically complete and the tests used by authors have reliable. The results of the research are consistent with previous studies and they confirmed findings on topic around.