Does it really offend some Filipinos of certain ethnic groups when you refer to their language as “dialect”?
All my teachers in the Philippines referred to every Philippine language except Tagalog as a dialect. My parents still think that too. The same debate goes on in regards to the “Chinese” language, wherein Mandarin is the only officially recognized language of China, and the other variations of Chinese are simply called “dialects.” Politically, Cantonese is a dialect; linguistically, it is a separate language. Generally, the difference between a language and a dialect lies in mutual intelligibility. British and American English are dialects; despite the fact that they have different accents, different spellings, different vocabularies, etc. they are both mutually intelligible. Cebuano and Tagalog on the other hand, are not. Someone who only speaks Tagalog cannot understand someone who only speaks Cebuano. Same goes for Cantonese and Mandarin. There are actual dialects in the Philippines though. The Cebuano spoken in Cebu City is not exactly the same as the one in Davao. So those two var
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