<VV> Re: no such language as "Mexican" No Corvair

[Ken Wildman]

Sorry guys.  There is NO such language as "Mexican".

You are confusing dialect with language.  Of course the differencs can get 
pretty vague but the most common distinctions are based on "mutual 
intelligibility" (can two people understand each other), shared written 
language, and some political issues (Norwegian vs Swedish for example).

The English language is spoken in both the UK and the USA.  We say "hood" 
and they say "bonnet" and so on, but we clearly speak the same 
language.  The problem comes up as the dialects vary further and further 
from the "standard" language.  French and  Spanish were originally dialects 
of Latin, but they've changed enough over time that they are now different 
languages.  That's certainly not the case for Spanish as spoken in Mexico 
and Spanish as spoken in Spain.  Being able to identify a Puerto Rican 
speaker of Spanish from a Spaniard or a Mexican doesn't mean they speak 
different languages just as being able to identify a southerner from a 
northerner in the US doesn't mean we speak different languages.

Just because some newspaper wrote an article doesn't mean that they have 
any better grasp on the distinction than professional linguists.

Ken