[vkazanov]

I grew up in the east of lithuania, mostly hearing polish and russian in my early years, and then also lithuanian to a smaller degree.

I eventually managed to separate the languages proper but I clearly see how the languages are are not a discrete classification.

Like, lithuanian polish and lithuanian russian are similar, but polish polish is further away phonetically.

Lithuanian has weird phonetics but the underlying grammar is very close to slavic languages.

English is much further away on the spectrum but why are sentence intonations (irony , question, etc) are still strangely compatible with languages from other branches of the language tree..?

Conclusion: strict language separation is a political construct not a natural thing.