section_path: Linguistic diversity/Languages and dialects
section_name: Languages and dialects
paragraph_text: Languages and dialects
  
  There is no clear distinction between a language and a dialect, notwithstanding a famous aphorism attributed to linguist Max Weinreich that " a language is a dialect with an army and navy ". For example, national boundaries frequently override linguistic difference in determining whether two linguistic varieties are languages or dialects. Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin are, for example, often classified as "dialects" of Chinese, even though they are more different from each other than Swedish is from Norwegian. Before the Yugoslav Wars, Serbo-Croatian was generally considered a single language with two normative variants, but due to sociopolitical reasons, Croatian and Serbian are now often treated as separate languages and employ different writing systems. In other words, the distinction may hinge on political considerations as much as on cultural differences as on distinctive writing systems or the degree of mutual intelligibility. The latter is, in fact, a rather unreliable criterion to discriminate languages and dialects. Pluricentric languages, which are languages with more than one standard variety, are a case in point. Standard American English and Standard RP (English) English, for instance, may in some areas be more different than languages with names, e.g. Swedish and Norwegian. A complex social process of "language making" underlies these assignments of status and in some cases even linguistic experts may not agree (e.g. the One Standard German Axiom). The language making process is dynamic and subject to change over time.