Closest language to your language.

Ye, both Dutch and Swedish are germanic languages. You can say that Swedish has some siblings (Norwegian and Danish) and some cusins like, (Dutch, German,English). I have read some where that Dutch is closer to Swedish than German but more Swedes understand German better becouse of tow reasons, you here German more often and many Swedes has learned some German during the Schooltime. One thing I know is that Swedish and Dutch has some similar words when it´s about sailing.
For example, akter, bidevind, stiltje, kuling and so on.
Hope for a Dutch translation.

Well,if you could give me an idea how akter, bidevind, stiltje, kuling look or what they are,I'd give you the translation.


In the Netherlands we have learned to live with the fact that very few people speak our language.


But a fact is that we are the only Germanic language to have reproduced itself.

I know Norwegian has a word derrived from Dutch for "Warship" something like "Oorlogskif" even though the Norwegian word for "war" isnt 'Oorlog' (dutch word for war,is Oorlog)

Well , stiltje is the sailingterm for, when it´s no wind at all. Akter is the back side or part of the boat. Kuling is when the wind is between 13.9 - 20.7 m/s.

The Swede,

In that case ,

stiltje = (wind)stilte
Akter = achter
Kuling = no idea ;)

Which language is clost to English?

The Swede,

In terms of vocabulary :French In terms of grammer and syntax : frisian

Ok so are there sub Germanic groups? What languages are in each of them?

Ren,

First you had Proto-Germanic,

From this , The North,West and East Germanic languages originated (there is or was no South Germanic group)

From these 3 'sub -groups' only North and West Germanic still excist,because East has died out.


North Germanic: Danish,Icelandic,Norwegian,Swedish.

West Germanic: German,English*,Dutch,Frisian,low saxon.

East Germanic: (all extinct) Gothic,Vandalic,Burgundian,Lombardic.

* English has a enormouse Latin vocabulary and some grammer,so English isn't the best example of a (West) Germanic language.

Afrikaans, closest language being Dutch, closest dialect being West Flemish ;)

Happy that I said dialect Sander?

In what colour would you like your coffin Snipsa? ;)

Speaking about the closest language, Hungarian is an interesting case, because there is no language that sounds similar to it. Of course it has "relatives": structurally the closest languages to it are Vogul and Ostiak, spoken by two tiny ethnic groups near the Ob river in Siberia, and it is common knowledge that Finnish and Estonian are much more distantly related to it. Yet all of the languages listed sound very different from Hungarian, because they split so early that their word-stock (and grammar and syntax) is now completely different - the only thing that is somewhat similar is their phonology. Hungarian is now a heavily mixed language, with a lot of Turkic, Iranian, Slavic and other loanwords, while Finnish has many Swedish, Baltic and even some Russian ones.

As an evidence of Hungarian and Finnish being related, a sentence used to be brought up which sounds very similar in both languages. It means "A living fish keeps swimming under water", and it is said as follows:

Hungarian: Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt
Finnish: Elävä kala uiskelee veden alla

The trick of it is that against this single (and somewhat contrived) one, hundreds of other examples can be brought up to show the differences. For example, "my house" is "házam" in Hungarian, and "taloni" in Finnish, "I love you" is "Szeretlek" in Hungarian and "Rakastan sinua" in Finnish, etc. And it is true, the word for "eye", "szem" (Hun.) and "silmä" (Finn.) , or for "fish", "hal" (Hun.) and "kala" (Finn.) are similar in form, but the inflections added to them are very different. So speakers of Hungarian tend to feel much less at ease when travelling abroad than speakers of Germanic, Romance or Slavic languages, who can often understand each other with a little effort, even if they haven't learned each other's languages. :)

Here is another example showing some similarity between Hungarian and its closest relative, Vogul (or Manshi).

Vogul: Pegte lau lasinen menl tou silna.
Hungarian: Fekete ló lassan megy a tó szélén.

The meaning of the sentence in question is: "A black horse walks slowly at the edge of the lake". But again, that is just one more example...

White please Sander ;)

You know I'm whiter than the whitest! ;)