How intelligible are Turkish and Azeri? I know they are close enough, but I wonder if it similar to Scottish English vs. American English or farther, more like Spanish vs. Portuguese?
How intelligible are Turkish and Azeri? I know they are close enough, but I wonder if it similar to Scottish English vs. American English or farther, more like Spanish vs. Portuguese?
Whether or not something is a dialect or an accent or a different language entirely is a sometimes poorly defined thing, often muddled by politics or history but also by asymmetric or incomplete intelligibility.
Surely at least most would say Scottish English is a dialect of the same language spoken throughout the test of Britain and the world, but I would caution saying things like “the exact same language”. Look at “Yugoslavian” or Serbian and Croatian for some other languages that are probably as similar and closely related as Scottish and American English, but are nonetheless considered separate languages by native speakers because it helps them to establish or enforce distinct cultural identities.
They’re not wrong in this case though, Scottish English is the dialect of English spoken in Scotland and the separate Anglic language is known as Scots. The line between the two can be blurry in places, but the terms do specifically refer to the dialect and language respectively.
Not to be confused with Scots Gaelic, an entirely separate Goidelic language spoken in parts of Scotland.
I’m aware, but even there the line between Scots and Scottish English is a pretty blurry distinction. It almost means “Scottish where I can only usually figure out what word that was” more than anything. Serbian and Croatian from my example are even closer than that, very much like Scottish and British or American English, with the main distinction that separates them being just whether it’s written with Latin letters or Cyrillic.
It’s a bit like if there was no Scots language, and the people in Scotland just still used runes to write but spoke the same language, except with even more old animosity fueled by previous governments.