That's sort of like asking if Scheme is a different language than Lisp.

Or maybe like asking if Racket is a different language than Scheme.

So the answer is "yes".

They are ok with evolving past the Smalltalk-80 standard. Think of it as a Smalltalk language + new things if they are beneficial. Cool project for sure.

Maybe; it's part of the OpenSmalltalk Initiative, and uses the same VM as Squeak, of which it started as a fork; whether it's a Smalltalk-descended language or a Smalltalk dialect is a matter of exactly where you draw the line.

It started out as a fork of Squeak; IDK how much it has diverged since then.

Don't know either, but the pharo MOOC I did a few years back only mentioned differences once or twice. I left with the feeling that beside a few, maybe syntax tweaks and new libs, it's 'same' enough.