Editing Language family (section)

=== Dialect continua ===
{{main|Dialect continuum}}

Some close-knit language families, and many branches within larger families, take the form of [[dialect continuum|dialect continua]] in which there are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally identify, define, or count individual languages within the family. However, when the differences between the speech of different regions at the extremes of the continuum are so great that there is no [[mutual intelligibility]] between them, as occurs in [[Arabic]], the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as a single language.

A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations. Thus, different sources, especially over time, can give wildly different numbers of languages within a certain family. [[Classification of the Japonic languages|Classifications of the Japonic family]], for example, range from one language (a language isolate with dialects) to nearly twenty—until the classification of [[Ryukyuan language|Ryukyuan]] as separate languages within a [[Japonic language family]] rather than dialects of Japanese, the [[Japanese language]] itself was considered a [[language isolate]] and therefore the only language in its family.