Company
Date Published
June 14, 2022
Author
Chris Doty
Word count
1174
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The distinction between a language and a dialect is not always clear-cut. Linguists often use mutual intelligibility as a test to determine if two varieties are separate languages or dialects of the same language. However, this approach can be challenging when dealing with similar languages such as Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. The level of intelligibility required to classify varieties as dialects or different languages is not clearly defined, leading to debates over whether certain forms of communication should be considered separate languages or dialects of the same language.