Closest language to your language.

Libelle Reiher   Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:15 pm GMT
My native language is English. I have heard that the closest relative to English is Frisian; other times I have heard Dutch. Does anyone know the correct answer?
Pete   Sat Feb 17, 2007 7:41 pm GMT
Well, they've discussed this subject in the English Forum a couple of times,and the conclussions were more or less ambiguous. They say that Frisian is the closest to English when speaking, but making a comparison between the written forms, Frisian is closer to Dutch.

Anyway, Dutch is not that similar to English. Dutch is closer to German actually, and in turn the closest language to Dutch is Afrikaans.

Kind regards

Pedro from Peru
Benjamin   Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:00 am GMT
« My native language is English. I have heard that the closest relative to English is Frisian; other times I have heard Dutch. Does anyone know the correct answer? »

Counted as a 'separate language', Lowland Scots would be the closest language to English. After that, it would be Frisian, since English and Frisian form part of the Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic languages. Dutch, on the other hand, is part of the Low Franconian branch of the West Germanic languages, along with Afrikaans.
lets to Linguist   Sun Feb 18, 2007 4:59 am GMT
Linguist Sat Feb 17, 2007 5:17 pm GMT
Russian also looks like Sanskrit, as well as other Slavic language, nothing strange as all of them are Indo-European including Baltic languages, also linguists put Slavic and Baltic languages into one group, see at Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balto-Slavic_languages

lets - learn linguistics more thoroughly :)

........................................................................................................

Wikipedia is a big bullshit because contain a lot of mistakes! Maybe the russian shovinists and occupants are interested to mix Baltic and Slavic languages putting them into one group...
Again, Baltic languages have nothing to do with Slavic ones, they are completelly dfferent.
Adam   Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:01 pm GMT
Frisian - De griene tchiise
English - The green cheese
Adam   Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:02 pm GMT
Frisian has 80% lexical similarity with English.
Adam   Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:11 pm GMT
It is much closer to English than it is to Dutch -

Frisian

kaai
tsiis
swiet
wiet
twa skiep

English

key
cheese
sweet
wet
two sheep

Dutch

sleutel
kaas
zoet
nat
twee schapen
Adam   Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:24 pm GMT
A look at Frisian grammar shows its closeness to English.

Unlike English, it has grammatical gender (common and neuter).

For common gender, the definite article is "de" which is pronounced similarly to "the."

For neuter gender, the definite article is "it" which must have the same origins as the neuter English pronoun "it". (English obviously still retains grammatical gender in its pronouns).

"I" is "Ik" in Frisian.

"Me" is "Mei".

"We" is "Wy"

"Mine" is "Men"

In fact, it is said that someone from northern Britain who concentrates very hard would be able to understand some Frisian. It has also been asserted that fishermen from Great Yarmouth could understand fishers from Harlingen in Friesland.
Alba   Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:41 pm GMT
Well I speak Albanian so uhm no language is close! LOL but I guess I'd have to say *Kosovar Albanian since they have a thicker accent and speak a more difficult form of the Geg dialect.

Ex:

Albanian(well closer to standard Albanian, lol): Ca po ben? (What are you doing?)
Kosovar Albanian: Qka po bon?

Albanian: Na thuaj ndonje gje. (Tell me (or us lol) something.)
Kosovar Albanian: Ani qa po kallxon naj sen.

Albanian: Ate dite ke qene i pire. (You were drunk that day.)
Kosovar Albanian: At dit je kon i pit.

Albanian: Te kisha qene une aty. (If I were there.)
Kosovar Albanian: Tisha kon un qaty.

This is why most foreigners cant learn Albanian cause we have like 5 billion diff accents/dialects and some of us cant even understand each other, lol
Skippy   Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:11 am GMT
I didn't wanna read through 16 pages...so I don't know if anyone said it, but as an English speaker, Scots is the closest language to mine (arguably). if you don't wanna call Scots a separate language, then Flemish is the closest to English, then probably Dutch.
DANCHO DANILOV   Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:04 am GMT
COULD A BULGARIAN SPEAKER UNDERSTAND MORE SERBIAN OR RUSSIAN? Im talking about by hearing/ speach , not reading. I myself believe that Serbo-croatian/Bosnian is more understandable by speach to a Bulgarian than to Russian. Now if a Bulgarian was to read both languages, I believe that it's is slmost equal in this manner.

But I'm looking for more opinions, would a Bulgarian find Serbian more undestrandable than Russian by speech?
Day   Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:45 pm GMT
Afrikaans and Dutch share a huge vocabulary of almost identical words,but the 2 languages have a totally different grammar.
Alba   Mon Feb 26, 2007 7:56 pm GMT
"COULD A BULGARIAN SPEAKER UNDERSTAND MORE SERBIAN OR RUSSIAN?"

A Bulgarian would understand Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian better than Russian, those languages are similar. ALso they could understand Macedonian since Macedonian is a mix of Bulgarian and Serbian.
Pier Johnson   Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:50 am GMT
On Mon Jul 04, 2005 12:49 pm GMT, The Swede asked:

Which language is clost to English?

On Mon Jul 04, 2005 1:11 pm GMT, Sander replied:

The Swede,

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


If you strip out [1] all Latinate words shuttled into English from both Anglo-Norman (Norman French) and Modern French (from Medieval times to the present) [2] all Greek words, you get a total of 6,458 words. Of these, a total 234 (3.6%) are French (OF, MF, ModF).

69.6% of all words come from OE, ME and Modern English and 76.2% come the aforementioned with American English.

Danish, ON and Scandinavian account for 347 words (5.4%); Dutch, Flemish and Fresian add 242 words (3.7%); yet the British only add 96 (1.5). [see table below]

Academics wrongly claim by a factor of 100 that 650,000 words exist in English.

-----

lang count % of 6,458
OE 2212 34.3%
ME 1361 21.1%
LE 923 14.3%
american 422 6.5%
scando 347 5.4%
dutch 242 3.7%
french 234 3.6%
frank 159 2.5%
british 96 1.5%
scottish 94 1.5%
saxon 67 1.0%
norman 64 1.0%
unknown 42 0.7%
gael 37 0.6%
spanish 27 0.4%
german 24 0.4%
hindian 22 0.3%
japanese 19 0.3%
italian 11 0.2%
portuguese 11 0.2%
australian 8 0.1%
malay 7 0.1%
other 7 0.1%
cantonese 6 0.1%
turk 5 0.1%
west indies 5 0.1%
urdu 3 0.0%
arabic 3 0.0%
maori 2 0.0%
Pier Johnson   Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:56 am GMT
Oh, and the above also strips out

Food Words, Sport Words, Music Words, Architecture Words, Political Words, Natural world words, trade words, etc.