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?
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].
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").
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.