Re: "Re-formed" Latin-script writing

From: "Jonathan Chang"

>     Take for example Chinese: Chinese has a standard written form that has
> united many Chinese "dialects" (many which are actually ancient tribal
> languages as "different" as German is from French, etc.).
Given that much of the mutual unintelligibility of the dialects is primarily
grounded in pronunciation and word choice, wouldn't "'different' as Spanish
is from Portuguese" or some such be a more accurate analogy? With the unity
of the written form and the ever-tauted five thousand years of Chinese
history which most Han plug into, why place 'dialect' in quotes? If "Wu" and
"Yue" were still their own countries, I might be inclined to call them
separate languages for political reasons, but since they're not, and for the
most part, it's relex action, why bother?

Kou