identical. The Levenshtein distance between written Dutch and German is 50.4% as opposed to 61.7% between English and Dutch. The spoken languages are much more difficult to understand for both. Studies show Dutch speakers have slightly less difficulty in understanding German speakers than vice versa. It remains unclear whether this asymmetry has to do with prior knowledge of the language (Dutch people are more exposed to German than vice versa), better knowledge of another related language (English) or any other non-linguistic reasons. Icelandic: Faroese. List of languages sometimes considered varieties Below is an incomplete list of fully and partially mutually intelligible languages, that are so similar that they are sometimes considered not to be separate, but merely varieties of the same language. Karakalpak: Kazakh and Nogai Many Turkic languages are mutually intelligible to a higher or lower degree, but thorough empirical research is needed to establish the exact levels and patterns of mutual intelligibility between the languages of this linguistic family. The British Academy funded research project dedicated to examining mutual intelligibility between Karakalpak, Kazakh and Uzbek languages is currently under way at the University of Surrey. Kazakh: Karakalpak, Nogai, Altay and Kyrgyz Kinyarwanda: Kirundi Kirundi: Kinyarwanda Kyrgyz: Kazakh and Altay and Karakalpak Samoan: Tokelauan and Tuvaluan (partially) Tokelauan: Tuvaluan and Samoan (partially) Tuvaluan: Tokelauan and Samoan (partially) List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages Akan: Twi and Fante. Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a dialect continuum, with some dialects being mutually intelligible and others not. While Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Zakho Christian Neo-Aramaic are mutually intelligible, especially on the eastern edge (in Iran), Jewish and Christian NENA varieties spoken in the same town are not mutually intelligible. Catalan: Valencian – the standard forms are structurally the same language and share the vast majority of their vocabulary, and hence highly mutually intelligible. They are considered separate languages only for political reasons. Hindustani: Hindi and Urdu – the standard forms are separate registers of structurally the same language (called Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu), with Hindi written in Devanagari and Urdu mainly in a Perso-Arabic script, and with Hindi drawing its literary and formal vocabulary mainly from Sanskrit and Urdu drawing it mainly from Persian and Arabic. Malay: Indonesian (the standard regulated by Indonesia), Brunei and Malaysian (the standard used in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore). Both varieties are based on the same material basis and hence are generally mutually intelligible, despite the