PART TWO languages that are secretly different languages. [OC]

Very pretty. A couple of comments:

  1. Italy actually recognizes Sardinian as a distinct language now, though they seemingly include the Sassarese and Gallurese dialects, which are closer to standard Italian than Lombard or Sicilian are, as dialects of Sardinian.

  2. Min is the only Chinese "dialect" not descended from Middle Chinese, and as such, many of the "sub-dialects" of Min are actually not mutually intelligible.

  3. The Arabic of the Arabian Peninsula is as distinct from the Arabic of Lebanon as the Arabic of Egypt is from that of Sudan, and Levantine vs. Mesopotamian Arabic are pretty distinctive as well. Moreover the sub-varieties (ie, Sa'idi, Lebanese, Tunisian) are usually the level at which colloquial varieties of Arabic are distinguished, and these are about as distinct as the Low German and Gallo-Italian languages.

  4. I assume you're only looking at official languages, but macrolanguages exist with non-official languages as well, for example Kurdish and Fulani.

  5. With official languages, I'm curious why you didn't include "French," with the langues d'oil and Franco-Provencal traditionally all being considered part of the French macrolanguage?

  6. Malay is also an interesting case, since, as you noted yesterday, Malay and Indonesian are basically the same language, based on Johor-Riau Malay but there are several non-standard Malay languages which are part of the broader macrolanguage.

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