From Italian to Russian with the Superpower of Intercomprehension

Abstract

Intercomprehension is the ability to understand a language that is related to an already familiar one. It is based on the activation of previous knowledge and cognitive strategies, such as inference. In this article, we claim that intercomprehensive reasoning can also be applied across European linguistic families. We argue that by creating didactic materials based on the fundamentals of the intercomprehensive approach, it is possible to leverage the students’ natural ability for intercomprehension when approaching a completely unfamiliar language of Europe. In particular, we study if inference can be applied to graphical decoding of familiar and authentic words in an unfamiliar European language with a different alphabet. A small-scale empirical study conducted in Rome with Italian speakers shows that they were able to autonomously decipher the Russian alphabet through a specifically created task.

Keywords

• Graphical decoding. Inference. Intercomprehension. Multilingualism. Plurilingualism