system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 At what point does a language become a dialect? How is it decided?
gpt
There is no objective, agreed upon definition among linguists about what is a language and what is a dialect.

Among non-experts, the distinction is hopelessly tainted by politics. 

For example, the Chinese government claims that many languages are just dialects of Chinese. However, some of these "dialects" are as different from each other as Spanish and French. The situation is similar with Arabic.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the situation in the Balkans: linguists generally agree that there is a single language known as Serbo-Croatian that is spoken in several countries. However, Serbs will insist that they speak "Serbian", Croats that they speak "Croatian", Bosniaks that they speak "Bosnian", and Montenegrins that they speak "Montenegrin". A similar situation is seen in India and Pakistan with Hindi and Urdu.