[stephengillie]

To take a different perspective, calling them separate languages helps reinforce a nationalist agenda. It gives your citizenry another reason to feel separate from, and maybe superior to, other nations. Calling Spanish and Portuguese separate languages, instead of two Iberian dialects of modern Latin, helps reinforce the idea that Spain and Portugal are separate nations, and not just different regions of the same peninsula.

[smallnamespace]

Yeah but maybe we should let linguistics and science decide what a language is or is not, and not bend the truth for political reasons?

I mean, 90%+ of Chinese people were taught and speak Standard Mandarin anyway. Language is not a reason for separatism today.

[rat87]

My understanding is that there is no bright line in linguistics and that language definition is by default messy and political

[bjterry]

It's not really by default, more like by necessity. Almost all categorization schemes for human cultural artifacts are necessarily blurry at the edges, and just because someone has provided a definition that is useful for one purpose (the study of linguistic differences across cultures) does not mean that it is suited for another purpose (rhetorically implying solidarity or separation between two sets of people).

[smallnamespace]

Mutual intelligibility is the standard criterion, and by that standard, there are different 7-8 language families in China.

[DonaldFisk]

There's also Catalan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/22/catalan-langua...

and the possibility that Catalonia might break away from Spain: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/10/catalan-indepe...

[FabHK]

Fair enough.

To be consistent with the linguistic facts, one should speak of the Chinese languages. You could also consistently speak of a Chinese language with dialects, and then also consider Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese different dialects of the Romance language; but that would redefine the terms from how they're currently commonly understood.