Quote Originally Posted by sperk
For example, the many dialects of Chinese perhaps share an ancient root, but are so different as to be almost separate languages. A speaker of Fukinese cannot understand a speaker of Cantonese and vice-versa.
"...Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often considered dialects and not languages, despite their mutual unintelligibility, because the word for them in mandarin, "Fangyan", was mistranslated as dialect because it meant regional speech."(Wikipedia)