How can two (or more) languages be mutually intelligible yet not be considered the same language?

Question

So Danish and Swedish are an example of languages that are mutually intelligible, apparently, yet if thats the case, how are they not considered the same language? If a Danish speaker can understand a Swedish speaker, then what makes the two separate languages and not just like… really distant dialects (like a Scottish accent + slang vs an English accent + slang)?

I’m very confused!

In: 18

Answer 1

There’s an old saying that a language is a dialect with an army. There isn’t a hard boundary where we say this is a dialect vs this is a language as you’ve shown above. So a large part of it comes down to politics too.