How intelligible are Turkish and Azeri? I know they are close enough, but I wonder if it similar to Scottish English vs. American English or farther, more like Spanish vs. Portuguese?
Alvaro@social.graves.cl to 
How intelligible are Turkish and Azeri? I know they are close enough, but I wonder if it similar to Scottish English vs. American English or farther, more like Spanish vs. Portuguese?
You are viewing a single comment
If you think American v. British are at 80-90%, Scottish is around 30% and that's being generous 🙂
I learned English from mostly American sources and I can barely understand Brit English :) It’s not just words, the accent makes it harder too. I guess I would never understand Scottish one then.
The Turkish/Azeri situation is close to this, at least for me.
For a native speaker British and American English are probably at least 99% intelligible for the main dialects, though there are some regional accents that are less. Scottish is usually mostly intelligible but I’ve heard some Irish ones where I can only catch a few words here and there.
There's I think a Tom Scott video where he interviewed someone with just the absolute thickest accent in a little Irish village, and he needed a translator from the village to mediate.
The challenge with Scottish English is mostly just about learning how they modify their pronunciation of English. Without having it explained to me, I was able to go from not understanding Limmy's Show, to understanding nearly all of it, simply by watching a lot of episodes and getting used to his accent.