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The meanings of "language" and "dialect" are surprisingly tied up in politics. Aside from what various folks in India speak, consider... In China, too, we say that people in different regions speak different dialects: the national standard Mandarin; Shanghainese; Cantonese; Taiwanese; Fukanese; and others. Someone who speaks only one of these languages will be entirely unable to speak to someone who speaks only a different one. I'm friends with a couple, the guy being from Hong Kong and the girl being from Shanghai; at home, their common tongue is English. So in what way can these different ways of speaking be considered mere dialects? But on the other side of the coin, there are the languages of Sweden and Norway. We like to call these different languages, but a speaker of one language can readily communicate with a speaker of the other. Wouldn't these be better considered dialects of the same language? I was recently on vacation in Mexico, and at the resort there was a member of the entertainment staff who came from South Africa, a native speaker of Afrikaans. She told me that she recently helped out some guests who came from Dutch, and spoke poor English (which is usually the lingua franca when traveling). Apparently Afrikaans and Dutch are so close that she was able to translate Spanish or English into Afrikaans for them, and they were able to understand that through skills in Dutch. Again, Afrikaans and Dutch seem to be dialects of the same language (and, I think, Flemish as well). I think the answer is that language is commonly used as a proxy for, or excuse for, dividing nations. So if you want to claim that China is all one nation, you have to claim that those different ways of speaking are just dialects of the same language. Conversely, to claim separate national identities for Norwegians and Swedes, we have to say that those are different languages. |