What separates a language from a dialect?
A dialect is generally an offshoot of the same language. You may not be able to understand it, but I’m sure many Britons do. It’s general intelligibility, not individual. A different language would be when two people cannot understand what the other is saying. You probably understand the Scots from growing up around them, but I doubt I could. It could also be what one of the previous answerers said about politics. As an American I speak a dialect of English to your British (or is it just a matter of accents?). We can understand each other (most of the time), even though we have a different way of speaking. But I couldn’t speak to nor understand a French speaker. I might get words here and there because we have the same linguistic roots, but we can’t communicate. Certainly not in the case of something like Bengali, and Indian dialect (but I don’t know so much as to whether a Bengali can understand a Tamil). It’s a matter of mutually intelligible speech, partially intelligible speech, an
