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Language rating...?
To Sander:
I used to work for a Dutch-owned company, and I used to translate many Dutch texts (mostly letters or magazine articles). What I was not very much able to figure out was the correct use of some words like "wel" or "al" which in some contexts had no apparent semantic function. They seemed just to be intensifiers rather than meaningful words. Am I correct on this?
On the other hand, Dutch spelling is certainly easier and more logical than that of English. It is also phonological, even more than that of German.
Yes your right ... dutch has a lot of little word...which have special rules.
=>On the other hand, Dutch spelling is certainly easier and more logical than that of English. It is also phonological, even more than that of German.<=
Well thats a point of view...whats your native language....I mean if you speak german Dutch is easier than if you speak french .
Cro Magnon: >>I've always thought English was so easy a child could learn it. :) In contrast, though Spanish is phonetic, its verbs give me a headache.<<
Be careful, English can also give you quite a headache when trying to master vocabulary usage on more advanced levels. It is what I would call a "top-heavy" language, if we take "bottom" to mean the basic levels and "top" to mean the more advanced ones. But I get the joke, of course. :)
By the way, my own classification of languages according to difficulty (focussing on grammar, and based on my own experience and that of others) would run something like this (principally for European languages and from the point of view of European learners):
Easy: analytic languages mostly without verbal inflections and a case system, relatively simple sentence structure, easy-to-master gender system or no gender at all (mostly Germanic ones like English, Swedish or Danish).
Relatively easy: analytic languages with a fairly predictable verb conjugation and gender forms, but a more complex tense structure (most Romance languages, like Italian and Spanish, but also Greek)
Medium: analytic or semi-synthetic languages as in the second group, but with more irregular forms with regard to gender and verb conjugation (like French, German, Dutch)
Relatively difficult: synthetic languages with a case system or agglutinative languages with a fairly large variety of forms/functions and/or a case system (most Satem languages like Slavic, Baltic, Armenian, Persian, Hindi, also Latin, and in the second group, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian)
Difficult: languages of diverse structure (synthetic, agglutinative or other, even analytic) with a fairly large formal or functional variety of grammatic structures, or governed by complex rules of usage in one or more fields, including tone languages with different pronunciation of the same word forms resulting in change of meaning (Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Thai, Japanese)
Very difficult: polysynthetic languages (most Aboriginal American languages)
Of course, I took grammar as the main focus, but it goes without saying that languages with a relatively easy grammar can also present difficulties in other fields (like mastering Swedish or Danish pronunciation for example, and as I already mentioned, the complexities of advanced English vocabulary). On the other hand, some languages classed as "difficult" may seem rather easy once you have mastered the difficulties of grammar (like Hungarian, which has some grammatical complexities, but a fairly straightforward usage). The examples have not been meant to be exhaustive, of course, and the list may look entirely different for a non-European speaker. :)
Sander: >>Well thats a point of view...whats your native language....I mean if you speak german Dutch is easier than if you speak french . <<
My native language is Hungarian, but I did learn German before I encountered Dutch. So in a way, yes, I could use German as a basis of comparison with Dutch, given some similarities of structure (admitting that there are many differences, of course).
Sander, to me, though, Dutch looks quite simple, as a whole, when compared to German, which I myself am more familiar with; from a superficial standpoint, it seems pretty much like a cut down German, with "low" rather than "high" phonology, which is a bit more like English in some regards, such as with respect to pronouns and like, even though technically it wouldn't be such, as such actually better describes Low Saxon than Dutch. It may seem hard from a native English-speaker's standpoint, when one has nothing else but English to compare it to, but it seems significantly more analytic and regular, in practice, than, say, German.
Easterner,
=>Sander, to me, though, Dutch looks quite simple, as a whole, when compared to German, which I myself am more familiar with; from a superficial standpoint, it seems pretty much like a cut down German, with "low" rather than "high" phonology, which is a bit more like English in some regards, such as with respect to pronouns and like, even though technically it wouldn't be such, as such actually better describes Low Saxon than Dutch. It may seem hard from a native English-speaker's standpoint, when one has nothing else but English to compare it to, but it seems significantly more analytic and regular, in practice, than, say, German.<=
Well Travis,you have the best of 2 worlds you speak the 2 closest related languages to Dutch.(German and English) But when I was learning German and English....I could only notice that English is really really really simplississimo,and that German grammer and vocabulary is very very similar to Dutch,but I have always had the feeling that to every German-Grammer rule...there were 2 dutch ones (sounds strange I know).
Im also fascinated by the similarities with German and English...want to know a strange thing?!
The English word "muscle" is translated as "Muskel" in German,but as "Spier" in Dutch (A totally different word,which is strange because Dutch is "closer" related to English than German,not much more,and to be completely accurate...English is related to Dutch,
not the other way around :) And there are many words like this...fascinating don't you think?!
On more thing =>but it seems significantly more analytic and regular<= Dutch is very unregular..some say that its it even "out-unregularisis" German (Im one of them :)
Eastener,
=>My native language is Hungarian, but I did learn German before I encountered Dutch.<=
Well...that helps a lot.(and you also controll english that helps to)
I noticed that people on this forum often mention "analytic languages" and "synthetic languages", but I'm not quite sure what that means. What is the difference between those two?
Sanja:
analithical languages are languages which express different relationships between words with help of prepositions, also they use auxilliary verbs (have, to be, avoir, etre etc.) which help to build verb constructions
synthetical languages use another methods - they dont have many prepositions and inspite of them there are numerous endings of nouns, adjectives, or different forms of pronouns etc. Also these languages dont use auxilliary verbs. and words just tend to change a lot - thats the main point about synthetic langs.
But in reality none of the languages can be pure analithic or synthetic, all languages possess both methods for building speech, but in english there are more analithic methods while in latin there are more synthetic and german is said to be somewhere in the middle.
By Dutch being regular, I meant things like it not having plurals which basically have to be memorized for each individual words, even though such can be successfully guessed for most feminine nouns, which, while only being one aspect of German, is probably the aspect of German which I myself find most annoying, and other things like having to remember which masculine nouns are "weak", and which masculine nouns may take -"e" when in dative case (as seen in expressions like "zu Hause"). As for Dutch being more analytic than German, Dutch does have far less case marking, including on determiners and adjectives, than German has, and as a whole relies far less on case than German, preserving it primarily in pronouns, like in English.
For example, with how Sander described adjective inflection being in Dutch, that is extremely simple compared to that in German, where one must separately remember three different /sets/ of adjective conjugations, named "weak", "mixed", and "strong", which are used depending on what precedes said adjective, with "weak" being used if an adjective follows a non-"ein"-word-determiner or follows another adjective which is *not* of the same significance as said adjective, "mixed" being used if an adjective follows an "ein"-word, "strong" being used if an adjective is preceded by no other adjectives or determiners, and if an adjective is preceded by another adjective of the same significance, that is, if adjectives are being simply listed, the adjective uses the same conjugation as the preceding adjective. This is greatly more complex than how adjective conjugation operates in Dutch.
I have found language ratings for native SLAVIC speaker (from easy to hard):
1) any other slavic language, esperanto
2) latvian, spanish, italian, portugues, romanian
3) english, dutch, lithuanian, french and other romance languages
4) german and other germanic languages, hebrew, altaic languages (turkish, mongolian), greec, hindi
5) all the rest
Well, as for English, Dutch, and German, one should also take into account Low Saxon, as Dutch really is not "between" English and German, but rather Low Saxon is between English, Dutch, *and* German, with the Frisian languages being between English and Low Saxon in turn. If one were to choose an language which were "halfway" between English and German, it would be Low Saxon, not Dutch, with Dutch having Low Franconian features that neither English nor German have in common. Nonetheless, Dutch is rather close to Low Saxon, all things considered, and hence can be rather easily substituted in the place of Low Saxon here by those who aren't taking minority languages, even rather major minority languages, into account.
=>3) english, dutch, lithuanian, french and other romance languages
4) german and other germanic languages, hebrew, altaic languages (turkish, mongolian), greec, hindi <=
How can this be right?!
first you say: english, dutch and than you say 4 german and other germanic languages,this cant be because E and D are germanic ones to.
Besides..how can german be more difficult than dutch?!
How can German be more difficult than Dutch? Such is so because it has more noun, adjective, and determiner inflection by far, uses cases which are explicitly marked (usually with determiners and adjectives, and also on nouns themselves in genitive case masculine and neuter nouns, dative case plural nouns, accusative and dative case "weak" masculine nouns, and some other dative case masculine nouns) rather than inferred from word position far more heavily than Dutch, and also has far less regular plural formation, which thus results in one having to memorize words' plural forms individually. (Yeah, I know I'm somewhat repeating myself here)
I really think your (not you travis) focusing on the written dutch.But can you speak it.
Dutch has a very complicated system of sounds...much (really Travis) more complicated than German.So even if you can understand written dutch,speaking it is a whole other matter.
Consonants
The plosives are p b t d k (g):
Symbol Word Transcription
p pak pAk
b bak bAk
t tak tAk
d dak dAk
k kap kAp
g goal go:l (only foreign/loan-words)
The fricatives are f v s z x (G) h:
f fel fEl
v vel vEl
s sein sEin
z zijn zEin
x toch tOx
G goed Gut (also xut)
h hand hAnt
Z bagage bAga:Z(@)
S show So:u
The sonorants (nasals, liquids and glides) are m n N l r w j:
m met mEt
n net nEt
N bang bAN
l land lAnt
r rand rAnt
w wit wIt
j ja ja:
Vowels
The Dutch vowels fall into two classes, "checked" (not occurring in a stressed syllable without a following consonant) and "free".
The checked vowels aew I E A O Y @:
I pit pIt
E pet pEt
A pat pAt
O pot pOt
Y put pYt
@ gemakkelijk G@"mAk@l@k
The free vowels comprise four monophthongs i y u a:, three "potential diphthongs" e: 2: o:, and three "essential diphthongs" Ei 9y Au, exemplified as follows:
i vier vir
y vuur vyr
u voer vur
a: naam na:m
e: veer ve:r
2: deur d2:r
o: voor vo:r
Ei fijn fEin
9y huis h9ys
Au goud xAut
There are also six vowel sequences which are sometimes described as diphthongs:
a:i draai "dra:i
o:i mooi "mo:i
ui roeiboot "ruibo:t
iu nieuw "niu
yu duw "dyu
e:u sneeuw "sne:u
Several marginal vowel phonemes are only found in loanwords:
E: crème krE:m
9: freule fr9:l@
O: roze rO:z@
Now...having say that....try to say this:
Dutch: Nederlands /nedərlɑns/ (NAY-der-lahnds)
hello: hallo /hɑlo/ (hah-LOW)
good-bye: tot ziens /tɔt zins/ (tott-ZEENS)
please: alstublieft /ɑlstyblift/ (AHL-stu-BLEEFT)
thank you: dank je wel /dɑŋkjəwɛl/ (DAHNK-ya-WELL)
that one: die /di/ (dee)
how much?: hoeveel /huːvel/ (who-VEIL)
English: Engels /ɛŋəls/ (ENGels)
yes: ja /ja/ (ya)
no: nee /ne/ (ney)
generic toast: proost /prost/ (prohw-st)
If think you speak it correctly ,your wrong its still different.
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