What’s the difference between a Dialect and a Language?

[meelsky]

Another thing with Scots vs English is that english people assume there is much more mutual eligibility than there actually is, because typically scottish people speak a combination of both languages simultaneously. This is why so many believe Scots to be a dialect or a collection of slang.

[nekhumonta]

I've always wondered about this. When Yugoslavia disintegrated a few new languages emerged. Not because people suddenly started speaking differently but because they wanted to distinguish themselves from people from the other countries.

[Gabriel]

The parallels between linguistics and biology seem never ending. The definition of language is very much like the definition of species.

[Lemonz]

I’m a native Faroese speaker, and we learn Danish in school. I’m much better at understanding all Norwegian dialects compared to the average Dane, because Faroese and Icelandic are descendants of the Norse language of the variety spoken in the west coast of Norway, and together with me being fluent in Danish makes me understand Norwegian almost as well as Danish, even though I’ve never studied Norwegian.

When I was a kid, before I was completely fluent in Danish, I sometimes accidentally read books that were Norwegian thinking I was reading a Danish book, without any issue. I remember one specific time, I was halfway through a book and then realized that the book was Norwegian, after maybe 100 pages, lol. I wasn’t the best at spelling back then, so I didn’t notice the spelling difference of many of the words.

[lfakroll]

Where you live in Norway also makes a difference in what other Scandinavian languages you understand. I live in a place close to Sweden, some words we only use here are very similar to Swedish, and people here usually understand Swedish much better than a person from Bergen or Oslo. Southern dialects of Norwegian are also more similar to Danish.

[wafflesaucey]

Once upon a time I did a little research for school on an endangered language: Ainu. It only has around ten native, fluent speakers, all tribal elders. The are variants of the language that are not mutually intelligible, those being Hokkaido Ainu (which is the only spoken variant), Sakhalin Ainu (of which the last speaker died in 1994), and Kuril Ainu (which is long gone). The Ainu people spread to different areas in and surrounding Japan, and brought their language with them. It evolved greatly after different groups were separated.

[FireandIce-ehmx]

As a person who speaks standard hindi. I can completely understand a Urdu speaker without any problem while i cant completely understand haryanvi person. while urdu and hindi are considered different languages while haryanvi is considered as dialect of hindi. Hindi is completely based on prakrit languague(prakrit is vulgar version of sanskrit) while urdu is 90% prakrit(structure and grammer) and 10% turkish, persian, arabic words

[Neyobe]

Amazing video! I’m Chinese and I always try to tell people that Mandarin speakers in itself can not understand each other, let alone including other LANGUAGES like Cantonese, hokkien, shanghainese, fujianese, etc

[oneproudukrainian]

Fun fact: not all languages are two-side mutually intelligible. A Ukrainian speaker can understand a Russian speaker fairly easily, while a Russian speaker has difficulty understanding a Ukrainian speaker. Rhis is partially due to cultural reasons, but also because Ukrainian has a lot of Russian words that are considered taboo or juat aren't used, while alot of the Ukrainian lexicon doesn't appear in Russian outside of borderland dialects.

[jamesgrewar]

As a scots speaker, thanks for promoting scots language

[ImNotGoodAtAnimation]

Yeah, I'm Indonesian therefore i speak Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) but an Indonesian person and a Malaysian person could pretty much understand each other, cause Bahasa Indonesia is a descends from Melayu, what's interesting though, is that some Sumatran dialects are much closer to Melayu than it is to some Papuan dialects, anyways great video!

[j]

Brilliant video! Although to be fair scotland also has gaelic, which is definitely it's own language, separate from English! (Although not many speak it anymore)

[Poly_]

It's crazy how he just turned Asian mid-video

[lordsiomai]

I remember when I was a kid, all the languages in my country (apart from the main one spoken in and around the capital) were just considered dialects, despite them not being mutually intelligible. I'm glad they changed it because it only reeks of superiorism of one ethnic group.

This is also why the line between languages and dialects are so blurry. We need to rethink how we see languages and dialects

[jodygrottino]

I live in Italy, and just to summaries the linguistic situation in my country:
✨"It's a mess"✨
😂😂😂

[gardencarcass]

on the topic if scandinavian languages, especially Norwegian has a ton of dialects that sometimes have different grammar rules. these dialects are sometimes so different that it's almost like a seperate scandinavian language all together

[cathacker]

czech and slovak (which are, for most purposes mutually intelligible) used to be considered two dialects of one czechoslovak language from 1920 (early first republic)to depending on the source either the 30s or 40s (i am not sure which, but both seem plausible due to the events which happened in these decades). I think this is a great example of how what counts as a language and a dialect can be a political issue more than a linguistic one

[DimaMuskind]

As a Ukrainian, I can almost fully understand Belarusan, our languages fully separated only a few centuries ago. I find this language very beautiful and I love it. It's a shame almost no one uses Belarusan anymore as it is replaced by Russian by a pro-Russian dictatorship in the country.

[riccardix]

For example, Italian dialects are actually languages, but it's like Arabic.
I speak Barese "dialect" and I can try to understand someone speaking Napoletano (it would be difficult, tho), but I can't understand someone who speaks Milanese, even if I tried to

[wooloolooo]

the last point is true to some extent because croatian bosnian and serbian are considered separate by their respective speakers despite the fact they are only actually separated by some minor phonological differences and some minor vocabulary. in the case of serbocroatian its very clear its one language as each of its forms are identical in 99% of its aspects. its like saying american english and british (also the added meaning of 'serbian' not being one variety, same with british not being one variety) are separate languages even though they are from different countries. one could argue that these forms of english are even more different from each other than the varieties of serbo croatian. if we are calling serbian and croatian separate languages then we should definitely consider american and british different languages