Why is it that Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects of Chinese but Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French are considered separate languages and not dialects of Latin?

Question

Why is it that Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects of Chinese but Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French are considered separate languages and not dialects of Latin?

In: Culture

Answer 1

So, other excellent answers have highlighted that there is no hard distinction between dialects and languages, but I wanted to add one thing in.

I am really not sure that Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects. Yes, a lot of people in the west would refer to a person as ‘speaking chineese’, but wouldn’t think of mandarin and cantoneese as the same language, rather were just being imprecise with their word choice earlier.