Eli5: the difference between a language and dialect?
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The transition between language and dialect is fluid. Often there are also political reasons for how something is classified. Luxembourgish, for example, is often referred to as a language of its own, although in reality it is no different from a German dialect. Serbian and Croatian are also actually the same languages, but after the Yugoslav war they wanted to distance themselves from each other.
In the German-speaking world, for example, there are very strong dialects. For someone from northern Germany, a speaker from Switzerland is almost impossible to understand. (People can still talk to each other through standard German). There are also strong dialects in the Italian language.
In China, on the other hand, the diversity of languages is denied and dismissed as dialects.
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