Cunning Linguists

Some would say Jie Yi speaks two languages, 中文 [Chinese] and 英語 [English]. She would say she speaks four, 官話 [Mandarin], 吳語 [Wu], 徽語 [Hui] and 英語 [English]. This is where it gets interesting, to me at least. I can recognise how this might be very boring to some. If 中文 is a language then 官話 and 吳語 are dialects. If 中文 is really a linguistic group then 官話 and 吳語 are languages. No matter how you want to classify these things 徽語 is really a dialect of 吳語. It’s like calling 美語 and 英語 different languages. They are but they’re really not.

I’m undecided. If they’re all really dialects then why do each of them have their own dialects? And why do they sound so different? Somebody speaking 官話 might not recognise somebody speaking 吳語. But if they’re really different languages then why do they all have the same written language for the most part? If you can read 中文 then you can read 官話, 吳語, 徽語.