Welcome to Gaia! ::

How do we determine whether two languages are really two languages versus two dialects of the same tongue? I keep hearing and reading about seemingly arbitrary lines to determine, but in nearly every case, there are countless exceptions.

Mutual intelligibility seems like a reasonable guideline, but clearly isn't the one being applied. Sicillian Italian is a fantastic example; speakers of it often find it nearly impossible to communicate with speakers of mainstream Italian. One speaker of Sicillian said he has an easier time understanding Mexican Spanish than mainstream Italian. There are many dialects of Chinese which aren't mutually intelligible, yet they are technically considered to be the same language.

On the flip side, some separate languages are largely mutually intelligible. Dutch and German spring to mind, along with Croatian and Serbian or Farsi and Arabic.

So, where do you draw the line? How should we determine where one language ends and the next begins?

I'd say that if two languages have a lot of mutual intelligibility (like 95%), and are related somehow, they can be considered dialects of each other. If they both from a common source, but unintelligible to each other, I'd say no, by then they have split into separate languages, though they make have common roots.

I don't give any credit for splitting languages into dialects for political reasonsor country divisions, such as Malay/Indonesian or Hinid/Urdu). Thats basically the same as calling american and british english different languages.

But in the end they're all languages anyway, so its not really worth worrying about in my opinion. They're just names, they don't actually change anything.

On the subject of the Chinese written language, yes, all "dialects" of Chinese use the same written language, but... English, Spanish, French, German, etc. all use the same writing system (with an extra letter or two now and then), but are indeed very different languages and are NOT mutually intelligible.

I think what my Chinese language instructor had said was that long, long ago, the Chinese language was much like English, with just a few different dialects for different areas, but as new dynasties came around, the dialects evolved and became more and more different. Eventually, the only thing they still had in common was tones and the writing system. To me, that's the sign of completely different languages sharing a common writing system. There are indeed dialects within the different Chinese languages, but these dialects are mutually intelligible with one another within their parent language.

I would like to see a decline in people calling Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. or any other language from China simply "Chinese." The differences are so great that a vague name like that doesn't do it justice. We don't think of learning "Romance" or "European" when we think of Europe; we think of Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc. I think the same concept should apply to Chinese... It should refer only to a language group, and more people need to be aware that "Chinese" isn't just one huge language you can learn and use with anyone from China. This is constantly becoming more and more of an issue as China continues to grow in power and prominence.

Anyway, to truly determine whether a particular speech/writing is a dialect or a whole new language, I think there should be some sort of tracing back to where the language originated, but still keeping some consideration of mutual intelligibility. I say that when a language reaches a certain, currently unspecified, point at which it is obviously deviated completely from it's original source, it should be considered a new language and NOT a dialect.

I also think we need another term to differentiate closely related dialects, such as variants of American English (southern, New Yorker, New Englander) as compared to British English or Australian English. Yes, these all may be considered dialects, but in rather different manners. Maybe a system like calling American/British/Australian "primary dialects" and calling "souther/New Yorker" and "cockney" as "secondary dialects" -- meaning they are dialects of dialects... You get the idea right?

"A cat by any other name would be as stubborn and stuck-up as ever."

Actually, a more appropriate analogy would be referring to cats and lions as "felines" and dogs as "canines." Then you look at a fox or something and wonder, is it more like a feline or a canine? It's still a fox, whether it's a feline or canine or even something else, but it might help you understand what a fox is like if you know it's one or the other.

And tones... Jeez, Cantonese has like 9 tones I believe. I can grasp Mandarin's 4 tones plus Neutral... I can't even imagine how you could have more than that and still be intelligible.

Its something to do with "tone contours" or something like that.

But, Hmong has 8 tones! surprised Straight up, 8 tones. Gha, do not want.

Yah, do want. A roommate of mine is Hmong, and I like to be sneaky and peek into his Hmong textbooks. Its weird.

It depends what you consider "east". Indonesian is south east, which is still east, and I'd prefer the indonesian orthography. Malay messes a few points up. but Indonesian has gotta be 99% phonetic. I lurve phoneticosity.

Though I don't know much abotu the Hmong orthography. From the amount of phonemes in that language, the amound of letters (digraphs taken into account) doesn't look to be enough to completely support the Hmong sound system.

So, To omniglot I go! surprised

What threw me off in that paragraph was that I'm pretty sure that the writing system was created after the existence of a difference in the "dialects." In the past, the "Chinese" people were separated due to differences such as "language" and area (no centralized government, you see). The reason why the common writing system was created was so that China could be unified into an empire (not by spoken language, but by written). This is what I learned in history, anyways. confused

(I used quotation marks because I wasn't sure what word should belong there.)

My mom and I got into a bit of an argument of dialect versus register. Like, is someone who speaks ebonics with his friends but standard english at work using two different dialects or two different registers? Was that girl from the movie Sweet Home Alabama using two different dialects or two different registers?