[magicsmoke]

Topolect was specifically invented in 1991 by Victor Mair as a translation of 方言 (fangyan) to get around the whole language/dialect bombshell when it comes to Chinese.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topolect

http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf

It's a way to take 方言 and decouple it from linguistic terms like language and dialects so a proper study and classification of the Chinese language family and its various languages and dialects can take place without interference from Chinese politics. When someone points out that Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are 方言 then linguists can nod politely, agree that they are in fact "topolects", then continue classifying them as Sinitic languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family each with their own collection of dialects.

Would be interesting to know if the study of Arabic has similar issues because from a layman's cursory knowledge Arabic has similar diversity when it comes to mutual intelligibility.

[AussieWog93]

Thanks for the links and explanations. It seems political definitions of what is an isn't a "language" are more political than I realised.

On a side note, I actually found it a little bit ironic that Afrikaans was listed as a dialect of Dutch in his paper.

Many South Africans would disagree with that classification quite strongly, especially since Afrikaans has its own literature and regional dialects.

In turn, there's a movement to classify the coloured dialect of Afrikaans as its own language (Kaaps), in fear that it will be swallowed up by the more standard "white" form and erode their cultural identity.