Eli5: the difference between a language and dialect?

Question

Eli5: the difference between a language and dialect?

In: 12

Answer 1

Political power/presence/posturing. Sometimes used as a sublanguage, but that gets misused.

For example, French/Spanish and Dutch/German are more mutually intelligible than Mandarin/Cantonese or Tagalog/Ilocano. Yet, the French/Spanish/Dutch/German are all the main languages in their respective countries, but Cantonese and Ilocano are sometimes referenced as dialects.

Mandarin is the government’s deigned language for the nation, while Filipino (essentially Tagalog) is also the deigned language of the nation. But Cantonese did not derive from Mandarin and Ilocano did not derive from Tagalog.

Though you have situations like Castilian (Spanish), Catalan, and Basque in Spain where they are identified as languages and not dialects.

Also a case of Swedish/Danish/Norwegian being separate languages, despite being mutually intelligible between speakers. You could argue they are “dialects” of a proto-language, but if no one speaks that proto-language, then what does it matter?

In short, dialect was a term to describe something in one place and completely fell apart outside. I argue that dialect is a defunct term that’s not useful. (Though if someone can provide a helpful example.)

Edit: Ok, I guess the modern example now of dialect is just regional variations of the language, but the case I found is that of American/British/Australian English as being English dialects. This means that Latin American Spanish and Iberian Spanish would also be Spanish dialects.