Re: [Lingo] Bulgarian and Russian and Romanian (oh my?)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

David J Iannucci writes:

 > While I don't doubt there was linguistic oppression going on (along
 > with many other types) during those Cold War years in The Country
 > Formerly Known As Yugoslavia, nevertheless the question of whether
 > Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible is an empirical one. If
 > they are (and AFAIK they are, to a high degree), then most linguists
 > would say that it is entirely reasonable to think of them as varieties
 > of a single language, and thus referring to them by a unified name is
 > not uncalled for (though one may question the choice of name :-)

You mean like French-Italian-Spanish-Portuguese (which, like Mandarin
and Taiwanese, are quite mutually intelligible as written languages)?
How about Igpay-Atinlay-Englishnay?  Pytho-English?

While mutual intelligibility is clearly an important criterion, and my
examples are mostly frivolous, I really have to wonder whether it is
either necessary or sufficient.