I was just making an observation regarding what linguistic scholars consider to be the difference between "accent", "dialectic", and "language". In English, people rarely say something like "He spoke in a Canadian dialectic". In fact, I've never heard anyone say such a thing or anything even approaching it. Not even linguists.
On the other hand, we always read that Cantonese and Mandarin are two "dialects" of Chinese. The fact is that Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible--completely different languages, not "accents" or "dialects".
On the third hand, Portuguese and Spanish are different "languages", but the people can generally understand each other. In Italy there are hundreds of local "dialects" that outsiders cannot understand. In Germany, High German is the official "accent" that only people with a hundred or two square kilometers of each other actually speak.
Meanwhile, if a bus driver from Edinburgh sat down with a bus driver from Houston to have a beer...well, yes, it would help to have an interpreter.
It amuses me greatly that a huge percent of U.S. airport workers are African Americans, meaning that it is nearly impossible for someone traveling to the U.S. to avoid trying to understand their "accent"; yet black English is not taught in your average English as a Second Language textbook, so if you have only had school English good luck trying to understand that customs official....
So by "political" I mean that the way we actually use the terms "accent", "dialect" and "language" depend not on any scientific definitions, but how we perceive our commonalities and differences within that larger community that shares the...a..."language". Or accent. Or dialect. Or whatever it is.
I have heard Germans say with a completely straight face that they can speak both English and "Amerikanisch". In fact, on the publisher's information page of a book translated from a book originally published in the U.S., you will find that the book has been translated from the "Amerikanisch", even if the author is British. Figure that one out! Now, are they implying that English and American are different languages? Or different dialects?
I have no idea what they do with books translated from Chinese.
Personally, I'm so confused about all of this that I highly recommend we all take a break to have a beer or two and look at some porn. Then we'll all come back here and elaborate on the relationship between tips and tits....