English, German, & Dutch

Guest who just posted   Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:58 pm GMT
<<"yield spiels no roll" LOL!!! >>

yup
less orig   Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:59 pm GMT
<<I'm curious!>>

you mean: you're "newsyearning"? ;)
fandango   Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:33 pm GMT
Elender Wichser :-)
movie tickets   Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:49 pm GMT
Belabberd rukker :|]
Guest   Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:40 pm GMT
If you have to search for some obscure english word that resembles dutch/german equivalents ( "wend"?!, "nim"?!...Come on!), or contrive a calque, its not really a cognate.

Just face it, english is FAR removed from its closest relatives, and no longer has much in common with them. Accept it.
Guest   Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:02 am GMT
<<But, as a native English speaker, Dutch looks very different to English, in my opinion. >>

It isn't readily apparent to the untrained eye/ear.

People generally won't realize how close the two language are to each other untill they study dutch; and this realization is more profound if they have previously studied a less closely related language (like a romance language) for comparison .

I think the striking similarities between dutch/english are more apparent in the structure/syntax of the language rather than the lexicon and phonology; theres just slight differences in word order. The languages 'flow' essentially the same way.

Dutch is definately the easiest of all languages for an english speaker to learn, and vise-versa.
Guest   Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:04 am GMT
<<Of course, like you said "at times", i.e. rather a small number of terms compared to uncountable closely related Dutch and German ones where English differs. >>


Lexical similarity is probably the least important factor to consider when judging which language is closer. Thats superficial reasoning.

German and Dutch certainly have greater lexical similarity than English and Dutch do, but thats just vocabulary; in all other aspects, English and Dutch are more alike.

I encourage english speakers who haven't, to learn some Dutch (just a little bit); you'll find it to be jokingly easy and realize (appreciate) its proximity to your own language - German is a whole different story.
Bosco   Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:55 am GMT
"German and Dutch certainly have greater lexical similarity than English and Dutch do, but thats just vocabulary; in all other aspects, English and Dutch are more alike."

No, certainly not! As a native of Dutch with competent knowledge of German (my mother is German), I can assure you that Dutch and German are (the HGCS aside) in every single aspect more similar to each other than Dutch and English. Of course, German is a bit more conservative concerning grammar but still Dutch is more akin to German and surely not as simplified as English.
Guest   Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:07 am GMT
Well, that's out of question. Look up Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language

"Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for some Anglophones learning Dutch. A simple example often used in Dutch language classes and text books is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is" which word-for-word translates to "I can my pen not find because it much too dark is" but actually translates to "I can't find my pen because it's much too dark". [...] Because of Dutch resembling German more than English in both sentence structure and vocabulary, this also means that English speakers who study German extensively (meaning the equivalent of about three years of university courses) can often understand written Dutch fairly well."
Travis   Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:11 pm GMT
Agreed completely. Actually, syntactically, Standard Dutch* and Standard German* seem very, very similar to much (much moreso than how similar Dutch is to English syntactically), with the largest noticable difference being when there are two infinitives in a clause, in Dutch the main one comes last of the verbs at the end of the clause while in German the main one comes first of the verbs at the end of the clause. Similarly, the nature of tense and aspect is far more similar between Dutch and German than between Dutch and English (with English having a very difference system of tense and aspect in practice from both Dutch and English). Likewise, their adverb placement and preposition usage seems much closer to each other than either is to English (even though one does see preposition usage closer to that in Dutch or German in more archaic English and fixed forms like "whereof"). And while there are some differences in auxiliary/modal verb usage between Dutch and German (such as how "gaan" is used in Dutch), they are nowhere near the differences in auxiliary/modal verb usage between Dutch and English (especially with respect to the use of "do", the negative inflection of modals, and the very heavy use of quasimodals in English).

* from now on I will in this post just be saying "Dutch" or "German" for Standard Dutch and Standard German if not specified otherwise.
guest2   Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:55 pm GMT
What about Roalndo's question from the first page. Is Swedish (or Norwegian or Danish) closer to English than Dutch, even though it's historically not as closely related? And would it be even easier to learn?

Also, some people think that Afrikaans is the closest/easiest.
Travis   Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:07 pm GMT
In my above post "seem very, very similar to much" should be "seem very, very similar to each other".
Leasnam   Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:24 pm GMT
<<Just face it, english is FAR removed from its closest relatives, and no longer has much in common with them. Accept it. >>

Not exactly.
In spite of the wend/nim disparity (and the "stretched cognates"--ok, you got me there :|)--I did try though ;) English is STILL very close to Dutch AND German and still is more similar to them than to any other languages on earth outside of Frisian and Plattduutsch.

We still relate on the majority of English words like 'hand' 'house' 'man' 'drink'/'drank'/'drunk' 'land' 'meaning' 'forget' 'ordeal' 'offal' etc. Other differences are minor, or are recent

English is also close to the Western Scandinavian tongues as well due to influences in the late Old English and throughout the Middle English periods.

As noted earlier, Dutch sentence flow can be like Standard German OR like Standard English. It is more flexible than German. Relying on a Wikipedia source is good, but you kinda have to take it with a grain of salt...who is writing this? what do they know? who edited it?
Leasnam   Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:27 pm GMT
<<We still relate on the majority of English words like 'hand' 'house' 'man' 'drink'/'drank'/'drunk' 'land' 'meaning' 'forget' 'ordeal' 'offal' etc. Other differences are minor, or are recent
>>

[continued]

Other differences are minor or are recent innovations in non-Ingvaeonic West Germanic or German itself which have spread to Dutch (like the tendency to place non-modal verbs and verbs in dependent clauses at the end).
Leasnam   Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:39 pm GMT
I just don't want us to lose sight of the majority of similarities that we are overlooking and taking for granted while we're micro-focusing on splitting hairs...

English Dutch AND German are all extremely closely related as far as languages go. Probably more so than quote-unquote "dialects" of Chinese are to one another...

please remember this