Garden Variety Linguist on Nostr: I teach that languages are like species & dialects are like subspecies - it turns out ...

I teach that languages are like species & dialects are like subspecies - it turns out all these things exist on a continuum of some kind, & where we draw the categorical lines is somewhat arbitrary. What biologists call "the species problem" is basically equivalent to what we call a "dialect continuum" situation in linguistics. So maybe biologists should start referring to a "subspecies continuum"?

"Language variety" has apparently replaced "dialect" as a technical linguistics term.