Nicholas Ostler, 2010
(July 2012)
Language – languages – are messy things.
There are no really clear-cut boundaries between the various levels of slang, pidgin,
creole, dialect and full blown language. The distinction is often more
political than linguistic. The relatively small differences between Scandinavian
and Iberian languages are primarily due to specifically identifiable historical
decisions; whereas in their ongoing quest to freak out the rest of the world by being
as terrifyingly monolithic as possible China insists that there is only one
Chinese language, despite spoken Mandarin and Cantonese being mutually unintelligible.
