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Mutual intelligibility is rarely the only reason for calling a different langauge different. E.g the scandinavian langauges are relatively easily mutually intel
by PavlikPaja 8y ago
Mutual intelligibility is rarely the only reason for calling a different langauge different. E.g the scandinavian langauges are relatively easily mutually intelligible, so is Czech and Slovak, yet they are called different languages mainly for political reasons. On the other hand, many of the Chinese "dialects" are not even alike, yet they are still considered one language for political reasons. Even perhaps more familiar "Black English" is usually considered to be nothing more than English with bad grammar, even though it's very clearly a distinct language of its own, that is not readily mutually intelligible with standard american English.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoYou just have a quirky understanding what a language actually is. Language names are given and defined in language themselves, and it does make a world of a difference if you say you speak Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian, even though they are quite MI among each other, and even somewhat MI with German. Linguists do refer to different languages in China, which are referred to by the government as dialects. So there is much more to it than politics. In your definition probably the whole Indo-Germanic family from Norwegian to Farsi or Hindi would be one language.