Hi Fredrik from Norway
Well I listend to it once again and still find the High German easier then the Plattdeutch.
Even though I did find the name funny though "Flat German" if it was written maybe it would be different.
I´m going to put up a link of Afrikaans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t7YFhTGCIg
sorry if you don´t like the sketch
Very interesting, Joey!
I, who know Norwegian, English and German, understood almost everything of the Low German, but only a few words of Afrikaans here and there!
I have noticed that other Germanic languages sound more similar to English so long as it is British English. The American acccent sounds farther removed.
Faroese supposedly sounds like American English.
Video in Faroese:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RdQNmmD1ACU
I do think the accent sounds similar. There is one announcer at the beginning that I felt had an accent that stood apart. I can now understand the "potato in mouth" comment more, if we sound like them, though I felt only certain people sounded as though they had potatoes in their mouths.
The first exposer to Norwegian I had, was by a Norwegian linguast that was making a very good comparison of Afrikaans and Norwegian.
With out a doubt I had a easy time with it as the words were directly translated.
When I first saw Norwegian with out this aid I understoud a lot less but still could figure out some words .
When I heard Norwegian, now that was a totaly different story, all I could hear was Ja and Nee with out counting one or two odd words.
I think you know what I am talking about Fredrick.
http://www.onnet.up.ac.za/kringe%20in%20'n%20bos.html
The above link is to my alltime favorite Afrikaans books auther maybe you might understand more then the link I had previously placed .
Let me first help you a little ´n means a.
eg
´n Deur = a door
I think that will be the biggest difference in reading Afrikaans but not the only difference.
Please copy past the previous link
Faroese does sound similar but only because the very rold 'r'.
I find the vowels to open in relation to American English but I can clearly see the compression.
Even though I can understand some words its more like.
...almal...spend(english)...fantasties
In other words odd words
correction
not compression but rather comparison
This was actually the first time I heard a lot of Faroese!
I now see that the American comparison is only valid if you compare Faroese to West Coast Norwegian, which often has uvular r and two tones, thus Faroese sounds like rhotic, staccato West Coast Norwegian, similar in some ways to how an American would pronounce it.
But beware of the youtube link! The bands they interview are Norwegian and they speak Norwegian!!!
But obvioulsy the reporters expect the Faroese kids to understand that, probably because all Faroese also know Danish. But Faroese and West Coast Norwegian are quite similar often. In some of the short statements I had to listen very carefully to determine the language.
Joey:
Thanks for the link. I can understand some written Afrikaans, but Dutch is easier for me, probably because Dutch has less shortened forms, so I have more "background material" to compare with German, English and Norwegian when I try to decode it.
A better source for Faroese with much less Norwegian creeping in:
Net TV (Netvarp) from Faroese Broadcasting (Kringvarp Føroya):
http://www.svf.fo/netvarp.asp
I listened to the Foroese and still think that the part that can be compared
to American English is the very round r´s. For me the thing that sets it
most apart is the s´s that are nearly always or always pronounced long and
with a shuss sound.
Fredrik from Norway
My linguistic background is different to yours the languages that I can speak is Afrikaans, English and Portuguese in alphabetical order.
Some time back I came across the word for 'ananas' in Germain and couldn't realy understand it using English or Afrikaans but it sound similer and was written in the same way as a Portuguese word. Ananas is pineapple, the Afrikaans word for pineapple is pynappel.
So infact I had to use a romance language to understand a germanic language lol.
I did starte learning Dutch in a open course,Dutch is very easy for a Afrikaans speaker with the exception of the gramatical structure, but had to put it aside as I was put together with people that had no notion of how a Germanic language is put together. The worst part it counted for their final mark. I always had the right answers with out studing and in a sense felt that I was in fact hindering their progress.
Mabye later I will pick it up again.