> The issue is about the use and misuse of the word "language".
And it's the sort of argument that I expect to see among laymen,
not linguists. In the cases of interest the choice of 'dialect'
or 'language' is fundamentally a sociopolitical choice, not a
linguistic one. Picard, Veneto, and Schwiizertüütsch are what
they are, whether you call them languages or dialects of French,
Italian, and German, respectively.
Brian
============
Amazing.
This is about as stupid as claiming that a horse is not a horse because it's
gray instead of black.
There exists objective reasons to describe varieties as dialects or separate
languages.
A.