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Comment by frogulis | Hacker News Reader

There's a pretty apt phrase that applies here: a language is a dialect with an army and a navy

Compare with the Serbian/Croatian "languages" that are far more mutually intelligible than varieties of the Chinese "language".

I've heard that Arabic also has far more variance than is between Serbian and Croatian. Even though we often refer to it as a single language, it's actually a very diverse selection of varieties that are not all mutually intelligible.

In short, the distinction is pretty arbitrary.

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It's the same with Scots (as opposed to Scottish Gaelic). Is it a dialect or a separate (although closely related) language to English? If Scotland becomes independent, Scots would very likely gain full language status for as much political as linguistic reasons.

Then we have "Italian" and "German". If these countries had not undergone unification in the 19th century would Duolingo be offering courses in Venetian and Bavarian?

>Is it a dialect or a separate (although closely related) language to English?

As I see it, Scots and Standard English are two dialects of the same language.

>If these countries had not undergone unification in the 19th century would Duolingo be offering courses in Venetian and Bavarian?

Tuscan and High German became the standard with the Renaissance and the printing press, centuries before nationalism.

Different areas of Italy in particular had different literary vernaculars over time. One's that's particularly amusing to me is Franco-Venetian [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Italian

> As I see it, Scots and Standard English are two dialects of the same language.

It doesn't matter how you personally see it. Linguists and other scholars are divided on the issue. It's recognized as a regional language by UNESCO and the Council of Europe as well as the UK and Scottish governments. There's also a spectrum from "Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent with some odd words thrown in" and broad Scots.

Danish and Norwegian (or at least Bokmål) are perhaps as close as Scots and English (I only have a passing familiarity with these so native speakers can confirm), but are considered distinct languages on as much political as linguistic grounds, which is my point - the distinction is as much political and historic as linguistic (i.e. there used to be a language only a few decades ago called "Serbo-Croatian").

>Tuscan and High German became the standard with the Renaissance and the printing press, centuries before nationalism.

It depends on what you mean by "standard". Tuscan was certainly the literary dialect, but most areas of modern Italy did not speak standardised Italian from the Renaissance period onward, except at the level of government.

"High German" is basically the dialect spoken in the Hanover area.

when you compare serbian and croatian and find them fairly similar it's worth keeping in mind that only holds true for the standard versions of those languages.

thing is these standard versions were developed and agreed upon more or less at a time -- mid 19th century and the whole nationalist movements thing in europe -- when there was a unitarian tendency among south slavic nations. so the standard versions are (1) essentially artificial, and (2) politically motivated to an extent.

once you get on the ground level of spoken language you find far more variance within each of the two -- the regional and even local dialects are very different from each other, to the point of seemingly being whole different languages were it not for the developed standard versions that tie them together.

Yes but historic dialect boundaries didnt follow modern national boundaries at all - see link below

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtokavian#/media/File%3ASht...

Which sounds like it contributed to the various wars on the Balkans.

I don't know if you are referring to other languages also spoken in Croatia which are not Croatian (Istriot). They might not be the same language, but I would bet that if two speakers, one of Croatian (of the three main dialects), and one of Serbian, want to communicate, they will find very little difficulty (like between British English and American English speakers) in doing so.

that's indeed very likely if they're using standard versions of their respective languages.

but if someone from let's say east istria and south serbia communicated in the traditional local dialects spoken there there'd be a significant degree of confusion and misunderstanding between them -- that's my bet at least.

Yes, a Mancunian and a New Zealander might have similar if not more trouble.

The Croatian government is now trying to encourage more linguistic differentiation from Serbian by introducing neologisms that were never used in standard Serbo-Croatian.

with little or no practical success. but yes, standard language development is essentially an ongoing political process imo. nation states trying to prove they're unique basically.

i suspect this is the case all around the world to a greater or lesser extent.

They used to say "Serbo-Croatian" before the war.

Only in Serbia, in Croatia it was "Croato-Serbian".

>In short, the distinction is pretty arbitrary.

Linguistically, the distinction is much more objective (also it's not always clear cut, because there are asymmetries between speeches in terms of how understandable they are to each other) : two kinds of speech that are not inter-comprehensible are different languages. Dialects and sub-dialects are defined by isoglosses, see the map I link in my original post.

Arabic is, much like Chinese, both a linguistic group and a language (Modern Standard Arabic).

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