Receptive multilingualism (RM), a mode of multilingual communication in which speakers of different languages employ their own native language to communicate and still understand each other, is considered to be a relatively under-investigated area in multilingual research. This article explores features of Turkish–Azerbaijani RM and, centering on a hearer-based analysis, looks into strategies applied for achieving understanding in the receptive multilingual communication (RMC). It shows that RMC between Turkish and Azerbaijani can be utilized as an alternative to lingua franca communication.