I've been stumped on this for a while now, this question has always bothered me. There are so many cases where two or more very similar languages; take Portuguese and Spanish, or Norwegian (bokmal), Swedish, and Danish; for example, are different languages but mutually intelligible (ex if I'm Norwegian and speak to a Dane, we would probably both have a decent conversation, but need some clarification with some vocabulary. Spanish and Portuguese are at a lesser extent but still could have some mutual intelligability).
However, there are many cases where a dialect (Some Chinese dialects vs Mandarin, some dialects of Arabic, dialects of Tagalog, etc.), Is very different from the standard language. I did research on this throughout the day and found 3 ways a form of communication is a dialect to another: 1. The politics of a region ( the governing body determines what is the standard language and what is a dialect based off many reasons (power, opinion of speakers, etc). 2. Social (the people in a geographic area who speak the language determine based off how they feel). 3. Linguists (linguists take in the prononciation of words, vocabulary, grammar, and other parts of the languages to determine if one is a dialect.)
This sounds simple but why is it that some dialects sound completely different from the standard language and some languages are very similar, and aren't dialects of a bigger language.
A better example for clarification could be Hiligaynon and Tagalog. I'm studying Hiligaynon right now, and noticed it is very different from Tagalog. Other than some similar particles they are not very mutually intelligible. However, with many languages that are mutually intelligible, they are two separate languages. An example could be some Scandinavian languages from earlier, Spanish and Portuguese or other languages in the Iberian pinensula I can't list.
The different dialects of English are all mutually intelligible even across oceans. British and American English can be understood, even with some different grammar, vocabulary, and prononciation.
Im not trying to say all dialects should be mutually intelligible, or every language should be different so why are there exceptions. I'm just curious on why these languages and dialects are categorized in this way.
Thank you for reading and sorry if there are issues with some formatting or spelling.
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