Eli5: the difference between a language and dialect?
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Linguistically there is no universal definition.
A language is usually some standarized form of talking and writing sanctioned by some goverment while a dialect is a primarily spoken form of communication that is closely related to and to a great degree comprehensive to the standard language, usually due to historical coevolution and a common ancestor language. Notice that a dialect is generally not derived from the standard language, it just coevolved. The standard language may also be a somehow artificial mixture of dialectic features.
The definition is hence mostly political:
Serbian and Croatian are often designated as different languages, despite being more or less fully comprehensible and only showing very minor distinctions. Luxembourgish is defined as its own language despite being virtually identical to neighboring Mosel-Frankish ideoms that are universally considered dialects of German.
In contrast, the Chinese goverment considers its spoken Sintic ideoms (like Cantonese, Wu, etc.) to be dialects of the Standard language despite them being similarly incomprehensible to each other and to Standard Chinese like French, Spanish and Italian to each other.
From a more linguistic point of view two languages often form segregated areas in which they are spoken, with a clear language border between them. In contrast dialects generally form a continuum where the manner of speach gradually changes from one specific phenotype into another when moving through the area in which they are spoken.
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