Why is Dutch so different from all other Germanic languages?

I have come across of a lot Germanic languages and learned quite a few and posses a fair amount of knowledge on each of the major ones. But ...

I just can't get past Dutch ... it is so different from all other West Germanic languages. Its grammar is just a terrible juggernaut! I mean, German (frequently named as a hard language, which it isn't) has a very clear structure and few exceptions to rules, so does English but when you look at Dutch, it's just a maze of rules all canceling each other out ...

Then the sound... it's just odd... it sounds nothing like German, Frisian, English or any other Germanic language!

How is this possible?! It's virtually surrounded by other Germanic languages most of them with considerably more speakers ... so how can it deviate so much?

Thanks,

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I thought Dutch was very similar to German, but with a simplified grammar. What kind of rules or exceptions to the rules make it much harder?

Well for example the verbs... according to Wikipedia German has 181 irregular verbs. Dutch has more than 350, the most of any other contemporary Germanic language!

Then there are these "strong verbs" (those which mark their past tenses by means of a vowel gradation). Generally there are thought to be 7 separate classes of strong verbs among the Germanic languages, yet class 7 alone in Dutch has 4 more or less separate verb types as opposed to 1 each in other Germanic languages!

Then there's the D/T-rules... which I can't even explain, also when talking plurals ... the double vowels/single vowels make you go insane! Then there are these irregular plurals... of which there are vastly more examples of in Dutch than English and German combined... "schip/schepen" "hoeveelheid/hoeveelheden" ...

there's just some examples...

I would have thought that English was the Germanic language that is furthest from the others.

English is definitely the furthest. Dutch is easy apparently, once you get past that shit ugly pronunciation.

<<English is definitely the furthest. >>

This really doesn't make much sense. Furthest from what? in regards to what?

If you look at German, English and Faroese, Faroese is furthest because English and German are much closer to one another than either is to Faroese.

This can be said of almost all the nordic languages.

What one could probably say that English and Scots are the most *divergent* Germanic languages; while the likes of Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian are quite different grammatically from more "modern" Germanic languages such as Standard Swedish and Standard Dutch, they are distinctly conservative rather than progressive in nature with respect to the ways that they are distinct amongst the Germanic languages.

English has a large number of irregular verbs as well.

Cloggies just want their hideous language to be so difficult that nobody can learn it and find out that they're a load of bullshitting gays.

<< Well for example the verbs... according to Wikipedia German has 181 irregular verbs. Dutch has more than 350, the most of any other contemporary Germanic language! >>

-- Dutch is indeed something special. It is a language that grew up like the German dialect it is but uncontrolled, unregulated, unacademic. Structurally simpler than German but fairly anarchic. A cluster of seamen and peasant slangs, you get the picture. Only quite recently did it give birth to a great literature, and some efforts were made to standardize it.

Dutch actually takes a central place among Germanic languages. Its vocabulary is closest to Old English, is of course in tight relation to German, but features also a number of words only found in Scandinavian tongues. Dutch can be described as more Germanic than any other Teutonic languages, but it has at the same time a 'Sprachunion' relationship to French, with some unexpected similarities like the low aspiration of unvoiced plosive consonants, in shear contrast with German and English.

<<Dutch actually takes a central place among Germanic languages. Its vocabulary is closest to Old English, is of course in tight relation to German, but features also a number of words only found in Scandinavian tongues. Dutch can be described as more Germanic than any other Teutonic languages, but it has at the same time a 'Sprachunion' relationship to French, with some unexpected similarities like the low aspiration of unvoiced plosive consonants, in shear contrast with German and English. >>

This makes total sense given the fact that Dutch is situated right in the middle of all (including French), and also at one time represented a kind of bi-lingual continuum along with French, via Frankish for several hundred years.

To me, Dutch doesn't seem to be set apart from the other Germanic languages. I can't see what would make it so unique. If anything, it's English which has pulled itself away from the rest of them.

I will agree that Dutch does sound quite strange, but it still sounds Germanic to me. A Dutch-speaker sounds as if he has something lodged in the back of his mouth and every once in a while he attempts to hack it up.

To me at least, the only thing non-Germanic-seeming about Dutch at all, French loans aside (especially considering that such loans are rather common in Germanic languages goday), is its lack of aspiration of fortis plosives. Other than that, though, I do not see much really atypical about Dutch as a modern Germanic language at all.

French speech did not influence Dutch, it's the other way around.

Frankish influence Gallo-Roman (pre French) ... and Frankish was the ancestor of Dutch (its only modern descendant)

Also it's wrong to call Dutch a deviant German dialect, which it isn't. Even Swiss German is a million times more similar to German than Dutch is.

In fact, Dutch is considered to be much and much closer to the older form of continental west Germanic than German is... I think persons who claim that German is a very deviant dialect of Dutch have more ground than persons who claim the other thing around.

Dutch, properly speaking is a Low German language, with the Low German languages basically being West Germanic minus Anglo-Frisian and High German; that is, they are a paraphyletic group that is defined solely by the lack of the changes associated with Anglo-Frisian and High German. That said, Dutch is not especially conservative as Low German languages go, being phonologically more progressive than, say, many Low Saxon dialects.