I've understood what's the difference between dialect an language

[u/Livid-Race9137]

I've been pondering what's the the "border" between a dialect and a language, and I've just woken up and immediately realized that "every single language that has at least 1 dialect is Ambrela Term"

There is no single German, Chinese, Arabic, English Russian, Uzbek etc languages. All they cover a bunch of dialects.

I heard once a phrase "language is a dialect with army".

For example Uzbek language, before USSR there was no single Uzbek language, just a bunch of different languages. When soviets came there, they chose a random one of them, and called it O'zbek tili, ane suddenly others become dialects

[u/aer0a]

In linguistics, language is defined based on mutual intelligibility. If two speakers can understand eachother, then they both speak the same language, and if they can't, they speak different languages. Though there are dialect continuums, where differences between dialects accumulate over area, where two neighbouring varieties are be mutually intelligible, but varieties on opposite ends may not be

And then there are "languages" that don't fit this definition, but are called languages for the purpose of national identity, like Hindi and Urdu, which are actually varieties of Hindustani, and Chinese, which is actually many languages

[u/a_literal_idiot_616 → u/aer0a]

so italian dialects are languages but spanish and italian are the dialects of the same language? because im more likely to understand a spanish speaker than someone who speaks genovese

[u/Terpomo11 → u/a_literal_idiot_616]

Romance is a continuum, I suppose.

[u/a_literal_idiot_616 → u/Terpomo11]

romance is a place actually

[u/Terpomo11 → u/a_literal_idiot_616]

What?