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
It has to do a lot more with politics than anything.
I’ll give you a few examples. Spanish and Portuguese are very mutually intelligible. At the time of colonial expansion, the languages were much similar than they are now. However, they have been thought of as different because of the two political entities with power that survived into the modern world. At one point the kings decided to abonded Latin as official language and use spoken language (of the capital) as the official language. When this happened, they legitimized their languages as independent and distinct.
Canotnese and Mandarin, on the other hand are not mutually intelligible. The written language is, to a certain extent, but the spoken language is different and distinct. The Chinese government insists that Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin and Mandarin is the only true language because they want to promote the idea of a strong national identity centered around the linguistic identity of Beijing
If you think about it, the European languages we know today are the varieties of native dialects with the most political power. Spanish comes from the langues spoken around Madrid. Italian is a standardized language constructed from renaissance Florentine. French is the variety spoke in Paris. German is the Northern German varieties. However the German in Austria is different because they’ve legitimized their own version of the language. There are so many different versions of each European language that is valid language and unique (not a decendant of the main spoken). But most of them don’t have the political power and have been dying away
For effective governing and a modern economy, speaking a common language is almost necessary for a country. While it is easier to do in some areas in the world, like Europe where the langues are very similar, it is hard to do in other areas where many distinct languages exist. This is a problem in Africa because the borders were drawn up arbitrarily there can be little national consensus of what national language and identity to promote. This has led to a lot of political instability and even genocides. This actually goes perfectly to why Catalan, in Spain, wants independence. The have their own historical language that had politic power, but disappeared in the modern world. They want to revive that identity and make it distinct from the Castilian (Madrid) Spainish identity.
Cantonese is so different than Mandarin that it even has a different number of tones, a fundamental grammatical element. Yet Chinese insist that they are just dialects of the same language.
Serbian and Croatian are basically lexically and phonetically identical. Yet Serbs and Croats insist that they are different languages.
It’s all about politics.
Languages are a family, some cheat on their origins with foreign languages to create new ones, them, become step siblings to the rooted modern languages of first old language, for examen Romanian and Italian/French, Romanian has more than just Latin influences, so it became a different language, but still deep rooted to the Latin language
ELI5 explanation: Family
I think it’s just because both spoke old Norse which ,overtime, the two countries created slang which then became words. For example: awesome. If u want a example with English. A lot of English words are derived from old Germanic which is why a lot of German words sound similar to ours.
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