- Question
What is the difference between a language and a dialect?
Are Mandarin and Cantonese individual languages, or are they dialects of Chinese? Questions like these would be easier to answer if dialects and languages were easy to define, but linguists still disagree on the difference between the two.
There is too much variability in the way each is described to divide them
This position holds that language and dialect cannot be cleanly distinguished, because there is too much variability in how each is defined. It argues that the definitions admit so many exceptions — political and social as much as linguistic — that no firm line can be drawn between the two.
Languages and dialects can be defined
This position holds that languages and dialects can be meaningfully distinguished. It argues that both linguistic factors — such as mutual intelligibility — and sociopolitical ones, like national status and standardisation, can be used to draw a workable line between a language and a dialect.