Language vs. Dialect

There's a widespread misunderstanding in Ghana about what is a language and what is a dialect.

Linguists like to define languages as being mutually unintelligible, i.e. a speaker of A cannot understand a speaker of B and vice versa. Dialects, on the other hand, are mutually intellible varieties of the same language, i.e. speaker of A can understand speaker of B, although there may be some tricky differences (lorry vs. truck), and speaker of B can understand speaker of A. There are obviously some complications with this definition, as dialects often run along a continuum of sorts, where speakers of A and B can understand each other and speakers of B and C can as well, but A and C are just too far apart for there to be mutual intelligibility beyond a very minimum. Then there's also the difficulty of what political bodies define as a "language" and what they define as a "dialect," and those definitions may not line up with a linguist's definitions at all. It gets complicated.

But while I was in Logba, I had people come up to me (usually Ewe neighbors of the Logba) and say, "Oh! You are learning the dialect!" I would say, "I'm trying to learn the language, yes. I think it's very beautiful." To which they would respond, "Ah, yes, the dialect. The way they speak here is very different."

It was really frustrating to me, and I usually just ended up saying, "Well, linguistically it's defined as a separate language, not a dialect at all." But now that I've had some time to think about it I think I probably should have just said, "Menagu?" ("Where are you coming from?") or some other appropriate phrase for the situation, like "Ta awa" or "Abo?" perhaps ("Good morning [said to one person, literally: I give you the breaking, i.e. of the dawn/morning]" or "How are you? [I haven't figured out the literal meaning of this yet]"). From what I know of Ewe, the phrases would probably be completely opaque (correct me if I'm wrong, non-Logba, Ewe-speakers).

Hypothetical better ending to above conversations:
"It's a dialect."
"Menagu?"
"What?"
"You don't understand? I thought you said you spoke Ewe. I was just speaking the dialect..."

Lots of work left to do on my paper. But today is a nice day of rest. I'm enjoying it.