When I hear someone say that they speak X languages and X dialects, I’m like, don’t sell yourself short! Call em all languages and let the nitpicky people nitpick away.
It looks as though this problem you and I had of being told to speak with "proper" vocabulary, accent and grammar or we would sound like uneducated country peasants may be a world wide phenomenon. I think that in the UK, celebrities on TV are more proud of their accents and celebrate them more now than was the case in the past. It's the slow loss of irreplaceable minority language words which I feel most disappointing. Yes, beware the ones with the armies and navies.
Speaking of which, I think it's clear that most Chinese languages should be called separate languages. Nine times out of ten when you hear a "Chinese speaker" calling them dialects, that person is a native speaker of Standard Mandarin.
When I hear someone say that they speak X languages and X dialects, I’m like, don’t sell yourself short! Call em all languages and let the nitpicky people nitpick away.
It looks as though this problem you and I had of being told to speak with "proper" vocabulary, accent and grammar or we would sound like uneducated country peasants may be a world wide phenomenon. I think that in the UK, celebrities on TV are more proud of their accents and celebrate them more now than was the case in the past. It's the slow loss of irreplaceable minority language words which I feel most disappointing. Yes, beware the ones with the armies and navies.
Speaking of which, I think it's clear that most Chinese languages should be called separate languages. Nine times out of ten when you hear a "Chinese speaker" calling them dialects, that person is a native speaker of Standard Mandarin.