>>7452213Here's one of my favorite images to illustrate the point. Each of these green boxes is a currently spoken "dialect". They are usually, but not always mutually intelligible with eachother. Meaning a Cantonese speaker can understand a Taishanese person, but he'll probably think that guy's a hick
because he is. Whereas that same Cantonese person has no idea what a Mandarin speaker of any variety is saying.