Going from Mandarin Chinese to Punjabi (เจชเฉฐเจเจพเจฌเฉ) has a composite linguistic distance of 77% (heuristic estimate). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.
Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.
Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.
Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.
Chinese โ Gurmukhi/Arabic
Sino-Tibetan โ Indo-European
The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Mandarin Chinese:
A quick 3-question check between Mandarin Chinese and Punjabi. No signup.