Similarities of Dutch and Deutsch

Filan

Watched a documentary in Farsi subtitled in Dutch last night...surprisingly I was able to understand at least the gist of most. It was very like German. Viele Woerter waren fast das gleiche. Has anyone thoughts on the topic?.

Alles gute
Alan

Persius

Filan wrote: »

Watched a documentary in Farsi subtitled in Dutch last night...surprisingly I was able to understand at least the gist of most. It was very like German. Viele Woerter waren fast das gleiche. Has anyone thoughts on the topic?.

Alles gute
Alan

Well, if it wasn't for the Normans, you would probably be able to say the same thing about Dutch and English. They're all "Germanic" languages. But english got isolated on the island of Britian and then heavily influenced by Norman French.

Some people claim that the plattdeutsch dialects spoken in parts of northern Germany (and what's now northern Poland from before the war) are closer to Dutch than German. Similarly, some claim that Swiss-German is as far removed from German as Dutch is. It's all a bit of a continuom and blur.

But historically the Netherlands evolved as a distinct nation from an early age, and developed their own written language. The people of what we now call "Germany" managed to come up with a compromise language based around more southern dialects, which we call German. The Swiss decided to use this language too at least in written form, rather than trying to codify their own spoken tongue (which varied widely across the germanic areas of the country anyway).

And the Flemish did have their own distinct dialect/language too, but that's essentially merged into Dutch in the last few generations.

thusspakeblixa

I only speak German really, and I can even understand bits of Afrikaans (understandably) and Swedish.All from the same stem.

Filan

Vielen Dank Persius..sehr interessant....

Persius

Just got my IFI program. There's a film on called "Silent Light" (stellet licht). By a Mexican director, but about a Mennonite community who speak Plattdeutsch. It's on in the IFC from 17 to 21 Feb and could be interesting from a linguistic point of view, as well as hopefully being a good film.

bowsie casey

I lived in Plattdeutsch speaking area aobut an hour from Dutch border and had colleagues from both countries.

It really is a continuum...while the Germand and Dutch guys both spoke their respective national tongues, both groups also spoke Platt (-deutsch and -hollandisch), which was almost identical.

Platt-, incidentally, has many many words which are very similar to English.

graceface!

Ich habe es auch bemerckt, das Deutsch und, er... Dutch sind etwas ahnlich. Warum ist das, ich wurde wissen? Ich habe neulich ein kleines Buch die Tochter meines Freundin gelesen, es war auf [Dutch], und ich koonte die meistens leicht verstehen, wegen mein Deutsch... letztes Jahr auch habe ich [Dutch] gehort in einem Flugzeug, und hatte mich gedacht das es hat sehr wie Deutsch geklingt...:rolleyes:

peasant

bowsie casey wrote: »

Platt-, incidentally, has many many words which are very similar to English.

Watt het he sech?


For a native German speaker, Dutch is relatively easy to read and get the jist of ...listening to it being spoken and trying to understand it though is a slighltly different story.

The pronunciation of the written word in Dutch varies quite a bit from the way you would pronounce that same word in German.

Add speed and a bit of "slang" and it isn't all that similar any more.


The same goes for Swedish/Norwegian/Danish ...but the gaps are even wider there.

An Citeog

graceface! wrote: »

Ich habe es auch bemerckt, das Deutsch und, er... Dutch sind etwas ahnlich. Warum ist das, ich wurde wissen? Ich habe neulich ein kleines Buch die Tochter meines Freundin gelesen, es war auf [Dutch], und ich koonte die meistens leicht verstehen, wegen mein Deutsch... letztes Jahr auch habe ich [Dutch] gehort in einem Flugzeug, und hatte mich gedacht das es hat sehr wie Deutsch geklingt...:rolleyes:

Niederländisch sagt man!

Wie schon gesagt, deutsch und niederländisch (sowie englisch) stammen aus derselben germanischen Sprache. Beim Lesen kann's verstanden werden, aber beim Hören ist es was ganz anders (etwas ähnlich wie katalanisch und spanisch).

anna.fun

Ich verstehe auch "Bauern"-Norwegisch, Dänisch, Afrikaans, Schwedisch und Niederländisch.
Die Gemeinsamkeiten sind schon gewaltig. Gerade in Skandinavien und den Niederlanden kann man nach ca. einer Woche schon sehr viel verstehen...

Alun

I lived for many years in both countries before moving here, and you're right, there are a lot of similarities between the two languages.

The word order in Dutch is slightly different, and doesn't quite go to the extremes that German does with piling on the past participles at the end of the sentence. Also there are no cases such as the genitive or dative to worry about, except for a few remnants of the time that Dutch had them that crop up in some common phrases and expressions. Dutch is also a very idiomatic language, that can sometimes be a bit baffling for outsiders .. there are actually dictionaries of them (called 'spreekwoorden') that are as thick as the normal dictionaries themselves.

Pronunciation can be difficult, especially some of the more guttural consonants, but personally I had the most trouble with some of the vowel sounds, many of which sound identical to the untrained ear, but are in fact very different, such as 'ui' and 'ouw', 'oe' and 'uu', or 'ei' and 'ij'.

Surprisingly there's still quite a flow of words from German into Dutch even now. Some have been imported verbatim, such as "überhaupt", others have been 'translated' such as 'inschatten' for 'einschätzen'. You also hear some Dutch speakers using a more German word order when speaking. Collectively these are called "Germanismes" and although frowned upon by some language purists, they're quite common.

Filan

Thanks...Vielen Dank

So Dutch is idiomatic? A lot of colloquial language?.

Alun

Filan wrote: »

So Dutch is idiomatic? A lot of colloquial language?.

Yes, quite a lot, more so than German on my opinion.