You could start by looking at all the different languages spoken in France. Most of them share a common root and can cross-communicate through modern French, but many are considered separate languages rather than simply dialects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France#/media/File:Langues_de_la_France.svg
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I also didnât know that they are very similar languages. Serbian and Croatian come to mind.
Serbian and Croatian are one language and you can think of the regional differences as different dialects. Think Zurich vs Bern Swiss German.
Your point 12 is misleading as there are 3 Kurdish âlanguagesâ and they are not mutually intelligible. A Kurmanji speaking Kurd will neither be able to read nor understand a Sorani Kurd
Russians can not understand Ukrainian language with ease. Itâs probably the same as if the person from Eastern Germany tries to understand someone speaking Swiss German.
You can add a pair Ukrainian - Belarusian. Although the languages are quite different, we understand each other perfectly. Belarusian sounds to us like if a Russian speaker tries to speak Ukrainian. The words are closer to Ukrainian but the pronunciation is closer to Russian. I can listen to podcasts in Belarusian without any problems and understand more than 90-95% of words.
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Very interesting. I didnât know that Belarusian is so close to Ukrainian.
So basically saying someone speaks Kurdish is like if we say someone speaks Chinese or Indian when in reality these are several languages: 3/ 2 / 18
Was it not the case that the USSR effectively âbannedâ some of the other languages by just calling them all Russian? Iâm not sure, but I do recall that after the breakup of Yugoslavia the various different languages which had all been artificially bracketed together as âSerbo-Croatâ were finally allowed to identify each as their own and revise spellings, indeed IIRC the alphabet itself was modified, to reverse the move towards a common identity and language which had been prevalant in the Tito years.
Even more than Czech and Slovak, which are also mutually intelligible.
Btw, I find the last two ones very interesting and sweet. (Iâm probably influenced by the Czech tv series I watched in my childhood, I find them adorable)
QuĂ©bĂ©cois is French spoken in Normandy during the 1700s. It evolved little while Normandy French evolved into the Metropolitan French spoken through France. Grammar is much the same but many nouns are âancientâ to French speakers.
Accent has become very nasal and language peppered with swear words based on the Church.
Tabarnak/Tabernac: Derived from âtabernacle,â it means âholy shitâ or âholy fuckâ and is used to express surprise or anger.
Calisse/CĂąlice/Coliss: Refers to the holy chalice, used to express frustration or apathy.
Ostie: Comes from âhostieâ (host), similar to the f-word in English.
Crisse: Means âChrist,â used similarly to âChristâ in English but can be more severe in Quebec.
QuĂ©bĂ©coise has also been affected by Acadian French spoken in the Maritime provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island,. It retains many archaic features from the French of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as the use of the simple past tense and the verbal ending â-ontâ for third-person plural forms. Acadian French also exhibits unique phonetic characteristics, including the use of a trilled ârâ and distinct pronunciations of vowels. The dialect has been influenced by Native American languages due to historical isolation and cultural exchange.
No wonder subtitles are required!
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No, of course not. Everybody had to learn Russian, but the other languages were also in use. Ukrainian was oppressed and marginalised, but it was always the main spoken and taught language in the western part of Ukraine. Ukrainian culture suffered a lot in Soviet times because many writers and poets were killed by the Soviet regime. Now the times have changed and many writers, musicians etc write and sing in Ukrainian, more people chose to speak Ukrainian in the everyday life since the war started in 2014 and especially in 2022.
The opposite happens with Belarusian. Since Russian is one of the official languages in Belarus, it continues to be the most spoken language. I believe that since 2020 Belarusian is considered a language of the opposition and suppressed ever more. Iâm afraid it might disappear if Belarus stays under the influence of Russia for the next decades.
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No, Serbian and Croatian are literally the same language.(Bosnian is Serbian with more Turkish words, if thatâs what you were referring to - Southern Slavs who converted to Islam in order to enjoy some benefits under the Ottoman Empire). Serbian uses the Cyrillic alphabet whereas Croatian uses the Latin alphabet. (probably because the Serbs are Christian-Orthodox whereas Croatians are Catholics)
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So, literally they are different languages 
I donât have time for this. 
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Same language, literally. Serbs also started using latin alphabet btw and even when they didnât it was still the same language.
Bit of digging finds quite a few places showing why some people want to think of them as separate languages, largely for political reasons, which is clearly what I had been thinking of (and no, Iâm not claiming anything either way, Iâm just interested),
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I find Maltese interesting. A unique lingua-Franka pidgin language. Itâs not Italian but uses a lot of Italian, itâs not Arabic but heavily influenced by Arabic. The written language is Arabic in Latin letters. English, because: Hey! Three is some Spanish and French. But most interesting is the Latin and the Phonician origins but also a few pan-Mediterranean words.
I never managed to learn more than a few words and find it more difficult than I did Danish.
I always thought Serbian and Croatian are almost the same language like Czech and Slovak but with different script.
From what my Serbian and Croatian colleagues say, yes, indeed, they are the same.
However, Slovak and Czech are not exactly the same, and due to the economic and cultural dominance of its larger neighbor Slovaks understand Czech, watch movies in Czech and read books in Czech, but is not the case the other way and supposedly younger Czech generation doesnât understand Slovak so well as their parents did during the Czechoslovakia times.