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A comment on English is weirdly different from other languages. Parent comment

Re:English is weirdly different from other languages by mhermher on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @04:31PM (#14455670)
If Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are considered separate languages, or Serbian and Croatian, then I can't see how Scots is not a separate language from English. I guess a lot of it comes down to politics.
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Re:English is weirdly different from other languages by JBReefer on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @04:46PM (#14455768)
"A language is a dialect with an army" is a pretty useful concept for distinguishing the recognized state
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Re:English is weirdly different from other languages by CWuestefeld on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @05:44PM (#14456179)
Politics it is.

On the opposite side, consider the many "dialects" of Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, etc. Someone who only understands one of these will be pretty much entirely unable to understand the others. Yet we give the Chinese a nod and let them consider all these different languages to be just dialects.

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