We measured mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages in Europe. Intelligibility was determined for all 70 language combinations using the same uniform methodology (a cloze test). We analysed the results of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries. Lexical, phonological, orthographic, morphological and syntactic distances were computed as linguistic variables. We also quantified non-linguistic variables (e.g. exposure, attitudes towards the test languages). Using stepwise regression analysis the importance of linguistic and non-linguistic predictors for the mutual intelligibility in the 70 language pairs was assessed. Exposure to the test language was the most important variable, overriding all other variables. Then, limiting the analysis to the prediction of inherent intelligibility, we analysed the results for a subset of listeners with no or little previous exposure to the test language. Linguistic distances, especially lexical distance, now explain a substantial part of the variance.

中文翻译：

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语言和非语言变量可以预测欧洲密切相关语言的可懂度有多好？

我们测量了欧洲 16 种密切相关的口语的相互理解度。使用相同的统一方法（完形填空测试）确定所有 70 种语言组合的清晰度。我们分析了 1833 名听众的结果，这些听众代表来自同一 16 个国家的受过教育的年轻欧洲人之间的相互理解度。词汇、语音、拼写、形态和句法距离被计算为语言变量。我们还量化了非语言变量（例如暴露、对测试语言的态度）。使用逐步回归分析，评估了语言和非语言预测因素对 70 种语言对中相互可懂度的重要性。接触测试语言是最重要的变量，覆盖所有其他变量。然后，将分析限制在固有可懂度的预测上，我们分析了之前没有或很少接触测试语言的听众子集的结果。语言距离，尤其是词汇距离，现在解释了很大一部分差异。