numerous lexical differences. Certain linguistic sources also treat the two standards on equal standing as varieties of the same Malay language. Malaysians tend to assert that Malaysian and Indonesian are merely different normative varieties of the same language, while Indonesians tend to treat them as separate, albeit closely related, languages. However, vernacular or less formal varieties spoken between these two countries share limited intelligibility, evidenced by Malaysians having difficulties understanding Indonesian sinetron (soap opera) aired on their TV stations, and vice versa. Persian: Dari and Tajik — Persian and Dari are written in Perso-Arabic script, while Tajik is written in Cyrillic script. Serbo-Croatian: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian – the national varieties are structurally the same language, all constituting normative varieties of the Shtokavian dialect, and hence mutually intelligible, spoken and written (if the Latin alphabet is used). For political reasons, they are sometimes considered distinct languages. Shtokavian has its own set of subdialects, leading some linguists to consider the other dialects (Kajkavian, Chakavian, and Torlakian) as separate languages, closely related to Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian (rather than being Serbo-Croatian dialects). Romanian: Moldovan – the standard forms are structurally the same language, and hence mutually intelligible. They are considered separate languages only for political reasons. Moldovan does, however, have more foreign loanwords from Russian and Ukrainian due to historical East Slavic influence on the region but not to the extent where those would affect mutual intelligibility. Tagalog: Filipino – the national language of the Philippines, Filipino, is based almost entirely on the Luzon dialects of Tagalog. See also Sister language Dialect levelling Koiné language Lexical similarity Lingua franca Multilingualism Non-convergent discourse References Further reading External links Harold Schiffman, "Linguists' Definition: mutual intelligibility". University of Pennsylvania. Common words between languages Language varieties and styles Comparative linguistics Dialectology