A standard joke about that: a dialect is an ideolect with a history and body of literature. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Language is an inst

A standard joke about that: a dialect is an ideolect with a history and body of literature. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Language is an instrument of politics like any other. Where my father grew up, the dominant language was not Spanish but Caló, which is generally (incorrectly, in my opinion) considered a degenerate form of Spanish. Later on he had to catch up a lot in order to be taken seriously in international business. He also learned Brasilian Portuguese, which started out as a regathering of various dialects of Lisbon Portuguese. It is a defacto language, and may become be widely recognized as such, given the political weight behind it.