How Similar are German and Dutch?

[@Langfocus]

Hi everyone! If you're currently learning German, visit GermanPod101 ( bit.ly/Germanpod101 ) for HUNDREDS of German lessons for students of all levels. And for Dutch, visit DutchPod101 ( bit.ly/Dutchpod101 ). A free account gives you access to lots of content, then you can upgrade if you want THE ENTIRE MOUNTAIN of content. For 32 other languages, check out my review! langfocus.com/pod101 (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)

[@TremereTT]

I'm from Westphalia historically my region spoke Lower German, but after 2nd world war the Lower German dialect was lost, thanks to the influence of evicted Germans from places that are now parts of Poland, Russia and Czechia. It created an amalgam of a dialect. So I never learned Lower German, yet I can understand it. I can also pretty well understand some Dutch people but not others. The weird thing is that I can have a conversation with Dutch people even if I don't understand every word because it's no problem to rephrase sentences in order to make them easier to understand. So if there is realtime communication Dutch and German are mutually intelligeble. Maybe also because in that situation you learn very fast how to be understood! And with every rephrasing you learn what the original phrase or word meant. There are still weird words that you never learn by rephrasing but you have to expirience. "Let op! Drempels!" You read that big sign with yellow background at the entrance to a settlement in Maasluis. You think about it. It must be an easy one... "Attention! Dremples!"...wtf is dremples? So while you think about it your car suddenly makes a jump just like David Hasselhofs car would have made. Just, learned a new word. "Let op! Dremples!" apparently translates into "Attention! Sleeping policemen!"

[@BETOETE]

something noteworthy: In the pronunciation, Dutch doesn't agree with German in the ei , as in kle, and Dutch, being cognate with low german, doesn't have a lot of umlauts (or are much softer) that today's standard german than make it sound a little like turkish.

[@dennislangedijk2255]

he man I saw that your Frisian as a dialect but it is a real language

[@dennislangedijk2255]

Dennis Groenendal zo scherp als een mes

[@teaser6089]

So is Dutch more like Older forms of German, in terms of how it sounds?

[@Lethal_Equo]

I'm Dutch but the hardest part about learning German is that a lot of words sound similar but have totally different meanings.

[@HesseJamez]

Germans have the same trouble with English

[@wennick4859]

@@HesseJamez English speakers have the same problem with German but not as much

[@MonsieurWeevil]

Or they are just "glued together" like in: rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

[@albertolopez8859]

@@HesseJamez for example Gift and Gift ....hehe gift is in german "Poison "

[@albertolopez8859]

@Pennsylvanian Amish Mennonite do you speak Amish ?? i speak the dialekt in the modern way ...speak slowly and separate in syllables ..first ....thats importante mittag.....essen or abend...essen... i speak that that dialekt from where den pennslvanian dutch is ...the regions name is Pfalz ...do you like to hear it in a song but they sing the song very fast .....sorry my english is not very good ,,,its because i dont speak since many years ...i speak much more spanish

[@DDFFan]

when i was 6 years old i was on a vacation in italy. i met a 6-7 year old dutch boy there and we both got really close friends in the 2 weeks we both stayed. the thing was that he just spoke dutch to me and i answered in my german dialect (luxembourgish). until i was a teenager i never knew that he spoke another language, i just thought hes a little bit "stupid" in talking. he probably thought the same about me. somehow both of us could communicate and always get what the other one wants to do right now. nice memories!

[@sunriselg]

Are you from Northern Germany or Southern Germany /Austria?

[@DDFFan]

@@sunriselg im from luxembourg

[@sunriselg]

@@DDFFan oh, the clue is in the username

[@Airborne675]

Im From The Netherlands I love Luxemburg, :) Benelux Brothers

[@DDFFan]

@@Airborne675 ik kan ook nederlands sprekken maar shrijwen is zeer moelijk, ik heb vrienden en nederland :)

[@desmorgens3120]

German: Was ist das? Dutch: Wat is dat? English: What is that?

[@Ecuarositayf1]

ja dat klopt

[@desmorgens3120]

@@thomasmoersch5862 Low German = Niederdeutsch = Nederduytsch 17th Century English terms: Low German = Low Dutch = Niederländisch High German = High Dutch = (Hoch)deutsch

[@aragorn1780]

Swedish: vad är det där 😁😁😁

[@IVortUa]

Icelandic: Hvað er það?

[@JessyDesjardins]

And here come the french with their "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?"

[@ostaroryan4719]

As a South Afrikan, Dutch is intelligible and sounds like just another dialect of Afrikaans

[@Schroefdoppie]

And vice versa 👍

[@ostaroryan4719]

@@Schroefdoppie are you even south african

[@mariadebake5483]

Afrikaans is a daughter language of dutch

[@ostaroryan4719]

@@mariadebake5483 Or a Dutch dialec, depending on who jou ask

[@ostaroryan4719]

@@Kleermaker1000 Ja nee to an ekstent but still relatively close

[@nientjew]

Dutch: "Wat hangt er aan de waslijn?" Germans: "Was?!" Dutch: In case you haven't noticed you've fallen right into my trap

[@hakushotacore]

OH 💀

[@xx_skullgamer_xx2754]

Can someone explain pls?

[@hakushotacore]

@@xx_skullgamer_xx2754 Was means laundry in Dutch and was means What? in German🚶‍♂️

[@hollaxow3331]

@@xx_skullgamer_xx2754 Dutch: "What hangs of the washing line?" German: "Was?" ("Laundry" in Dutch, but "What" in German)

[@norasmith4939]

It was a joke. Dutch people asked in German can I ask you a question? Darf ich Sie etwas fragen. German said sure. Then Dutch asked wat hangt er aan de waslijn? German people Was?! Not understanding question

[@donovanmic]

I can see why Dutch people speak English so well. Their language seems to be half way between English and German.

[@LORDMEHMOODPASHA]

There's a saying that "If German and English were two landmasses separated by a river, Dutch would be the bridge connecting the two landmasses" or something similar to that.

[@djmuscovy7525]

After all the Netherlands sits half way between Germany and U.K. just kidding

[@TheRavenir]

Actually, Frisian is even more similar to English than Dutch is in some respects. It's the language that's closest related to English, other than Scots.

[@octaviano1296]

Yes. And the other reason is that the Dutchmen consider their own language as a very small one. Even though more people speak Dutch than all speakers of Northern Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian etc.) combined.

[@germanikolaas]

English is a German language.

[@wietzzzz4]

English man: "What do u do for a living?" Dutch man: "I fok horses" English man: "Pardon?" Dutch man: "Yeah paarden"

[@hyruleemblemier]

nice

[@thijskupers806]

That is well a goeie

[@Eclecticgirl17]

Can someone explain this joke please?

[@hyruleemblemier]

@@Eclecticgirl17 put the dutch phrases in google translate and see what happens :)

[@pelinyldrm6508]

That needs to be on top

[@throughthewindowpane]

I am Dutch. At my first class of German, my teacher said: “German is an easy language, because it is so similar to Dutch. But German is also very difficult because there are so many differences with Dutch”. Now, I sometimes work with German people. The Dutch speak Dutch and the Germans speak German and we understand each other. Talking eachothers language is too hard to have a proper discussion…

[@ajs41]

Can most of them speak English as well? That's probably a stupid question. I'm English and it still surprises me how most Europeans can speak English so well. I shouldn't be surprised by it, but I am. I know it's more to do with American culture than British culture a lot of the time.

[@throughthewindowpane]

@@ajs41 Most Dutch people are better in English than in German. And I have noticed that (in general) the Dutch are better in English than the Germans.

[@DieZockerZone1]

​​ @Andrew JS well in germany we learn British english, american english is not well seen her, i guess, im 11 years out of middle school most germans have this school form (start with age 7) 1-4 Basic school 5-10(12) middle school. and then the 12ers can study in the university and we learn english at the age 8 or even younger. every day in school at least 45min. and the most of the internet is in english, thats why we are used to the english language the german internet is not that big and i assume the dutch part is even smaller, if you wanna find some you have to learn/use english

[@JROCKNROLL_]

@@throughthewindowpane That's because in Netherlands everything is focused on learning and using English. Also lot's of things aren't translated in Dutch at all. So, you learn already on a young age to understand English, because well, there wasn't a translation around anyway so you had to learn it. for example games are 90% in English only some are also in Dutch but most of them only have English, French, Spanish and/or German as extra language. Also many TV shows aren't dubbed but all with subtitles, which also helps to get used to the sound of a language which is helpful when you start learning. While in Germany almost everything is translated and back in the days English wasn't a subject you had to learn, after 2 years or so you could drop that language at school and focus on English was just soso.. But nowadays the younger generation in Germany(age 12~25), they seem to be pretty good in English too. But most 30+ people don't really speak English well, because they didn't had to learn it back in the days.

[@gangmemberofthepapus5517]

@@ajs41 Dutch children have to study and graduate the subject English from age 12-18 (often also when youger) one of the basic subjects in school just like math.

[@FLIPPYNMADZ]

English speaker who's learnt German. When I was in the Netherlands I found it so easy to read. But as soon as someone spoke to me I was lost

[@meneeryarno22]

Haha, I'm Dutch and I don't struggle with English. I can easily read, speak and understand it. I probably only fail to understand when someone with a very very strong accent starts to talk English to me

[@lalu2707]

Were you able to understand the written dutch because of your german knowledge or would you have understood it without it too?

[@FLIPPYNMADZ]

@@lalu2707 I don't know cause I've never tried before I learnt German. I was also there 10 years ago so I don't know how I'd do now

[@ici_marmotte]

Haha, the same with me. Reading Dutch as a German is not a problem, but when they begin to speak, I'm totally lost.

[@kc_h7h]

@@FLIPPYNMADZ its because English is a germanic language just like dutch. Its easier for you to learn dutch and german then any other language in the world

[@lindaschreiber5932]

I'm a retired teacher of French and Italian, and have studied a great deal of Dutch I find your videos superb: clear, scholarly but very easy to follow. Wonderful work.

[@Langfocus]

Thank you, Linda!

[@デニ]

there are 3 double spaces and 2 triple spaces in this comment

[@africancouscous]

@@デニ wow dude I care so much!

[@デニ]

@@africancouscous i wasnt talking to u

[@Dai_Abdurrahman]

Yeah learn and understand the old high german sound shifting and you speak 95% Dutch. more about that soon xd^^ canal

[@aureliar.4233]

Wow. I'm a native German speaker and I just realised how COMPLICATED it would be to learn german.

[@patolt1628]

Oh yes !

[@uweinhamburg]

LOL.... That's why hardly anybody is able to write proper German 🤣

[@nico3064]

@@uweinhamburg Stimmt. Die Autokorrektur rettet mir regelmäßig den Arsch XD

[@alwaysuseless]

As a native English-speaker, I'd say German is harder than Spanish or French, but not all that hard, especially if you take an instant liking to the language, as I did. The 4x4 table (4 cases x 3 genders & the plural) takes a while to internalize, but I found word order not to be a problem. Now that I speak German at about the B2 level, I would find learning Dutch very confusing, because of all the real and misleading similarities, even though, overall, Dutch appears to be grammatically simpler.

[@nehxx]

@@alwaysuseless german is the nicer language though XD. English is my native language but I live in Austria and German is hard DONT worry

[@flyingviking5281]

As a Norwegian who moved to Germany as a teenager, I now realise that it would probably have been easier for me to learn Dutch than German. There are also a lot more similar words in Dutch (to Norwegian) than in German.

[@alwaysuseless]

Lol. Easier but useless, since you were in Germany. :-)

[@niekflikweert7778]

That could be Dutch fisherman sometimes land their fish in Denmark (Hirsthals/Thyboron) and told me that the Danes can understand Dutch dialects better then Standard Ducth.. I'm not sure if that;s really the case...

[@lydiaparishinta5201]

For example?

[@katjawalta]

@@lydiaparishinta5201 I've heart that's the case with Frisian.

[@dan74695]

Most of the loanwords in Scandinavian are from Low German.

[@nientjew]

Hey! I am a Dutch girl that moved to Germany when I was 14. Funny enough, in my first period in Germany (when I did not speek the language at all) I would actually most of the time just speak Dutch with a German accent and the majority actually understood it pretty well. I would consider my German to be pretty good. It's been 4 years now and I fully comprehend everything and definitely speak the language fluently. Just the grammar is a pain sometimes. A funny language difference I wanted to point out: The German expression: "Kommst du klar?" (which literally translates to "are you coming clear?") makes use of the verb "Klar kommen" and is used to ask someone if everything is alright/ if they understand everything (it is kind of a mix between the two of them, I really like this expression) But in Dutch we also have a verb called "klaar komen" which is pronounced basically the same but means "to get an orgasm" you can understand my confusion when in my second week in Germany one of my teachers approached me and said: "und Nina? Kommst du klar?"

[@vincent5880]

Dat noemen ze nsb-er

[@robdewit5819]

@@vincent5880 hahahah lekker

[@tobi-98-31]

Geiler Scheiß :'D

[@RaserballKP]

Man muss Fremdsprachen einfach lieben xD

[@ronaldvairfields4348]

@@vincent5880 jij was zeker ook verzetsheld in de laatste twee weken van de oorlog?

[@daytona1212]

I'm Dutch and I have never learned German in school, but I do understand German 100%. I learned german just by watching a lot of German tv in my childhood.

[@derschwarzekanal200]

I.m lerning Dutch using Duolingo.

[@daytona1212]

@@derschwarzekanal200 Why not. Good luck and maybe we see each other here in the Netherlands one day.

[@jeanforest8060]

Which to me sounds like the right way to solve the problem... A classroom or kit turning out in most cases to be a dead end.

[@vijf]

best way to learn a language

[@freiheitstattzwang8218]

Geil Alter, Respekt. Gute Lernleistung

[@robertfinch4937]

As an Englishman fluent in German, and having taken some basic Dutch classes. I will say that Dutch was very easy to pick up. I feel that it is a half way house between English and German, with some unique vocabulary and a very different pronunciation. So I find it often quite difficult to understand spoken Dutch, but written down I can understand the vast majority.

[@JackAkaJCK]

Me to but I am the other way around, I live in Germany and am fluent in English and I heard there is also a bit of French in it

[@seaofseeof]

@@JackAkaJCK yes, you can definitely thank Napoleon for the influx of French loan words

[@JackAkaJCK]

@@seaofseeof and the Roman's for the latein words in every west Europe language, 4example exit (latein for a door) or lot of words only people use who work in a state owned business and are forced to speak so

[@UTopia-eg7gm]

‘Half way house’ the funny thing is, as shown in this video partly, that Dutch is more original then German. And English. For English what I regret is that they ‘mispronounce’ a lot of letters. E.g. the ‘A’ should be like in Alfa or in car, but not as in care or date. E as in echo or in never, not as in be or he or she etc.

[@stehkloscheier2805]

Ist die Sprache also Niederländisch schwer zu lernen? Oder geht es klar?

[@nicz7694]

As a German, Dutch sounds like a crazy mix between German and English when you hear it :D It's an interesting language indeed and when I'm finished with the work we have currently in our company, I might start to learn it.

[@andybar1406]

Agree

[@omerfarukturk7412]

100%

[@Shareenear]

And Klingon

[@sigjuget3443]

I mean man is man is is is Ik is I to be honest an english speaker can learn dutch in a short matter of time

[@TechieindahHood]

As a native English speaker who was/is learning German, my first time in Amsterdam hearing Dutch, I though it sounded like bastardized German LOL

[@nephilimcrt]

I'm Dutch and I had a German girlfriend for about 5 years, so my German is pretty good. Reading and speaking it is not really a problem for me, but the 'den/der/diese/dieser/dieses' part I was never able to master. The trick is to just pronounce them quickly and as if you know what you're doing. Just always say 'de' or 'diese' and Germans will just fill in the blanks and not notice (or be polite enough not to let you know they've noticed).

[@saltydagger6635]

nephilimcrt Wow. Never thought of that. Good Job 👍

[@alexanderholzer7392]

They almost always notice. I'm a non-native speaker of German who spent dozens of hours pounding the case system into his own head, and now that I have a thorough understanding of it, even I hear incorrect gender and case instantaneously, given that I know the noun being spoken (which Germans 99.9% of the time will.)

[@twitertaker]

Be sure we notice even minimal differences like "den" and "dem". It's our mother language after all. But most likely we will not correct a small error like that.

[@MrFliffi]

@@twitertaker exactly. esspecially if you're fluent in it.

[@jmitterii2]

@@twitertaker Standard German is a contrived language, surprises me that Germans of various regions really do notice. There's only a few things in English that really stand out for even the country hilly billy rustic folks... not changing good to well when describing something "You play the piano good." Bad English... sometimes bad grammar in English is done on purpose to sound humble, exaggerate or emphasis, or just sound "cute".

[@MinecraftPony155]

I'm from northern germany and dutch sounds more like german to me than what they speak in switzerland.

[@nathnlturner68]

My friends are bothered by Swiss slang for "Schokolade," which is "Schoggi" (I don't remember if I spelled it correctly)

[@azhadial7396]

*German guy:* Hallo! *Swiss guy:* Bonjour! *German guy:* Warum? Ich verstehe nicht. _Oh wait... wrong kind of swiss! My bad..._

[@americanexcursions3542]

Because Plat Deutsch is closer to Dutch than to Allemanic in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Do you understand Dutch better than Bavarian or Austrian? I love reading about differences between dialects of German.

[@DreHill1]

I'm from Nothern Netherlands and I can speak Dutch/Platdeutsch dialact in Northern Germany and a lot of people understand me over there right across the border.

[@lenavonpreuen4869]

Same

[@LeeNashMusic]

My Favorite false cognate is "Ik/Ich komm klar". In german its "i`m fine/i can deal with it (by myself)" in dutch it is "i have an orgasm"

[@davarus]

Alter als ob😂😂

[@walterross9057]

"Ich komme" can mean the same!

[@schwammi]

@@rajapeter2543 in Germany it also means horny, we also use it as great but it very much means horny

[@ls200076]

@Your Mom's Creepy Uncle klaar komen

[@Jan-cr8cl]

Martin Lienesch ich komm is in german: I have an orgasm

[@sarihoffman-dachelet4491]

As a native English speaker, who learned German as something between a native language and a second language (I basically can't translate german to english for love nor money, because i didn't learn it in an academic setting, but from my mom/family in germany, just... not as a baby/small child, but as a young teenager) I find Dutch FASCINATING because i can understand it SO WELL. It helps that my Opa spoke Platt and my family is all firmly in the low german dialectical areas of germany, but Dutch is WAY easier to understand than any of the high german or alemannic dialects to me.

[@peterpwn255]

That's the point :D the west/norther german/platt went over to GB with the people, that's why its even called "England" - "Land der Angeln, or Angelland". Over hundreds of years with some influence of french, scandinavians and even romans, the language got easier with the grammar and sometimes vowels are pronounced another way, but it stood the same in building a sentence.

[@ici_marmotte]

Yes, you're totally right. Frisian Platt is very similar to Dutch. To be honest, Dutch is another form of the Frisian language.

[@JannekeBruines]

@@ici_marmotte you are absolutely right, but that is a very unpopular opinion outside Frisian borders ;)

[@kas-lw7xz]

In the Netherlands, almost every 10 minutes of driving you get another dialect lol

[@thearchivist8143]

Same in Flanders aswell lol

[@blasterxpro9026]

Je bedoelt elk half uur , bijna alle steden zijn een half uur van elkaar verwijdert

[@jonathanjansen5990]

Nee gewoon een ander accent niet een ander dialect

[@bram3152]

Gewoon niet tenzij je in het westen woont maar ik woon in het oosten

[@henkhenksen1699]

toevallig uit het liedje van 'het land van'?

[@knotwilg3596]

Being a Flemish (Belgian Dutch) speaker with very little practice of the German language (Flanders has no border with Germany, unlike the Netherlands), I have made embarrasing mistakes using "false friends". One day I was in the German speaking part of Belgium (we have that too) and was looking for a house that my friends had rented. I went to the village pub and said "Ich suche meine freunden. Sie verheiraten ein haus hier". "Verheiraten" somehow came to mind because "to rent" is "huren" in Dutch. But "verheiraten" means to marry. The locals were pretty sure my friends were not marrying a house, but what could I be looking for? Fortunately we all spoke French ...

[@wilfriedwachter2458]

"Ich suche meine Freunde (without n), sie haben hier ein Haus gemietet." Rent = mieten (ich miete, du mietest, er/sie/es mietet, wir mieten, ihr mietet, sie mieten; sie haben gemietet, sie mieteten, sie hatten gemietet).

[@anonimouse4678]

@@wilfriedwachter2458 you guys are pretty smart I speak only English

[@Dear_Mr._Isaiah_Deringer]

@@anonimouse4678 well that would be third big West Germanic language. And the only Germanic language left using the word german, thou(gh) luckily unpretentiously 😉 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages Still a little odd usage when in some technical understanding it would self-include English in middle English at least _thou, thee, thy, thyself, thine, ye, you, your, yourself or yours_ not sure about correct pronoun here it's a bit too Shakespearean for mine English 😋 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany _ On the plus side though, once you can tell apart the root of a Germanic from Romance word you're basically halfway polyglot vocabulary wise 🤗 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

[@lambertlambert7076]

La Belgique, comme l'Afrique, parle français pour communiquer entre communauté :D

[@pentasigil]

@@lambertlambert7076 a defaut de

[@marcellec787]

As an Afrikaans speaker I enjoy the fact that I can understand both these languages fairly easily 🙂

[@Ruhrpottshark]

I'm German but life 40km away from the Dutch border. I can also understand a little bit Afrikaans. When you work many time in other Contries you see so many things we have together.

[@douloureux.]

Thats because its a daughter language of dutch

[@aaronwassen4140]

Carcharodon Carcharias i live around 5km off the border

[@ahmetseckind8866]

Imagine knowing German and English and Afrikaans and Dutch

[@iliasvanbrabandt153]

Als een Belg versta ik : Duits, Frans, Engels, Nederlands, Afrikaans, Latijn (nog aan het leren) dus ik zit goed

[@EvAlGi]

Living in Germany as a Dutchman I am very used to both langueses. easy to say, most Dutch understand German, but only a few German understand Dutch. May be also education, there in the Netherlands, German is the third languages that is educated.

[@dasbose4962]

Agree, I am Berliner and I dont understand shit of Dutch xD...some words only.

[@campo8777]

Yeah I feel like you guys learn German at school way more often. In Germany you cannot study dutch at all. Except for a few regions along the dutch border maybe.

[@campo8777]

I don't know why it is like that. My theory is that in general the dutch people are way worse at playing football. Just a theory 💁

[@tommooren681]

German and/or French are the third language

[@romanr.301]

*German is the third most commonly taught language Also, the discrepancy might be that German phonology is simpler and more phonetic than Dutch is. Asymmetric intelligibility appears with Spanish and Portuguese also; Portuguese speakers are more likely to understand spoken Spanish than the other way around. Whereas Spanish phonology is rather straightforward and simple, that of Portuguese is less so and more complex.

[@tommywolfman]

I am a Dutch speaking Belgium guy who is living in Germany for about ten years. So I know what I am talking about. And THIS VIDEO is amazingly precise! Very well done! Good job!!!!

[@DrWhom]

Erm no, he gets the meaning of "false cognate" the wrong way around. They are true cognates, but false friends in the sense that the meanings have diverged.

[@rikrutten5924]

Ah, but can you understand the Limburg dialects?

[@MBeckers]

@@rikrutten5924 nobody understands Limburgs

[@pimpinmagicianofprophecy]

So your basically a german.

[@jaaptendijk7192]

Darf ich Sie frage wieso du nach Deutschland bist umgezogen? Stimmt mein Satz? Btw just a Dutch guy speakig german to the best of my abilities. My sentence was "May I ask you why you moved to Germany"😅

[@shahedzakhil7594]

Dutch and German are two closed brothers where English is their cousin whose father got married to half french and half Latin woman 😄

[@Leiake2604]

That's probably a very good explanation for why I as a native Flemish person have the feeling my language is about as similar to English as it is to German.

[@maxonite]

Mh well it's not like German and Dutch aren't heavily influenced by Latin

[@Leiake2604]

@@maxonite Very true. The English seem to think the influence of Latin and French is unique to their language. Evidently Flemish has a very heavy French influence going on.

[@AndreaAlison]

Trueee

[@mr.tusetsky7737]

@@Leiake2604 Actually Anglo-Saxons with their Germanic old-English were raped and killed and used by the French-Norman invaders, that is why so much French vocabulary got into English. All their nobles were solely French speaking for centuries . So it's not like marriage, it was a rape and forced living under French-Norman rule.

[@natasjateerling3622]

My uncle told me he didn't know the word for mirror (Dutch: spiegel) in German, which is also Spiegel, so he invented a word for it: zurück-gucker, terugkijker, meaning something that looks back... Lol!!!!

[@YuBeace]

Natasja Teerling real clever!!!!

[@gabor6259]

zurück-gucker 😂😂😂

[@Tunkert]

the trick is to use Dutch words in your German when you don't know something

[@trevorjames7490]

The heckk

[@madgadgetss]

that is funny but also kinda spooky sounding at the same time xD

[@theyakmaster9984]

Ik this won't get read and I'm several years late, but I'm a native speaker of Dutch. I have a friend who speaks Geman, and I sometimes hear him having conversations with his family. I can understand some words or the concept of what's being discussed, but not fully understand it. It would take me a little bit of time to understand a piece of written German.

[@hanswurst2355]

For me as a german it's the other way 😄 I understand Dutch partially, it's really fun to hear because it sounds like a mix of english and german. For example 'water' is written like it's in english but pronounced in a german way. And day -dag -tag is another formidable example of a mix, but pronounced in a dutch only way 😂 cheers buddy

[@kippokappa9150]

Yeah it’s The same Vice versa I really need a couple of minutes to understand Dutch but I really like the Netherlands but Deutsch is a good starting point to learn Netherlands

[@itsmelissa5788]

I'm a native speaker of German and I can't really understand much if someone speaks Dutch. Maybe a few words, but that's it. For me, understanding written Dutch is easier than understanding spoken Dutch. So if I have a Dutch text in front of me I can at least figure out what it is about and understand a little bit.

[@angiew4544]

For me it's reversed. I can understand some spoken Dutch and piece it together but understand more when I'm reading it.

[@peterbreis5407]

I'm in Australia and heard a schoolgirl having a phone conversation with her mother on the bus and was puzzled what German dialect she was speaking, possibly Swiss, West German or an extreme Austrian dialect. At the outside guess, Dutch or Danish (v unlikely). We got off at the same stop and I asked her which German dialect she was speaking, turns out it was Afrikaans. I was surprised I could understand as much as I did, given how remote from Central Europe Afrikaans is.

[@wwijsman]

I'm a Dutch guy who taught himself German with some apps. When I reached A1 level (after a couple of months, I was a bit slow) with Grammar, vocabulary and speaking, I started watching German TV. I was able to understand most of it, depending on the subject. Now a year later, I only sometimes have to look up a word. It is relatively easy for a Dutch person to learn to understand German. Speaking and writing are harder, though.

[@Holloaway]

As a german myself, I understand 75% of dutch writing. Understanding Dutch Speak is completely out of my range tho.

[@christopherhellmann7754]

Same experience, just the other way around :) Managed to learn Dutch to conversational level in just a year and back then already I managed to understand almost anything but slang which I was much less exposed to :)

[@liamsal9968]

I stopped learning german, because I’m not a huge fan of learning languages except english, because i was always someone who likes to play video games and back in the old days, there where no games in dutch so I had to learn english to understand what I was doing in one of those games, right now I understand Every word of english that has been thrown out to me ( the most!), and also with the help of KZbin 😉. I’m more of a science type of Guy though, and by the way, I can aldus learn a other language later on. Besides school may be irritating, but it is for me the best way to learn things about science like the structure of molecules, their weight showen in units and setting that weight over to kilograms. Something like this Will be harder to learn then languages in my opinion later on. Because you have to invest more into this, at least that is what I think.

[@michielvdvlies3315]

ik vind het makkelijker om duits te leren in oostenrijk, ze spreken daar wat langzamer en articuleren beter

[@michielvdvlies3315]

@@christopherhellmann7754 there is a way to learn dutch slang a little bit easier. there is this "torrie van mattie" in dutch slang its the gospel of matthew in dutch slang! kzbin.info/www/bejne/nn-XmGaGqsuXsK8

[@Daelaron]

I'm German, and I can understand a lot of Dutch, but definitely not all. Not even close. I come from OWL (East Westphalia), so I'm probably more exposed to our lovely neighbours than some others. For example I'd say Tag as "Tach", like dutch, but with a sharp T. Makes me sound like a Klingon. ;) If they speak slowly, it becomes rather easy, and actually fun to find so many similarities. In a heated conversation I'd get overwhelmed, flustered and lose the topic fast. On the other hand, I can barely speak any of it. The dialect and pronunciation is easy to imitate, but the vocab is really strange sometimes. I'm interested in medieval stuff, so I actually really recognize a LOT of common ground when I think about the roots. Archaic words that nobody really uses in that sense colloquially anymore. But we'd still know what they mean, if we aren't 15 years old and somewhat educated. ;) For example I could tell you that "peinlich" and "pijnlijk" aren't false cognates. "Pein" means "pain". Peinlich / Peinvoll (painful) are somewhat archaic, but in some rare cases still used. The word "Schmerz" just took over. "Peinlich" started to mean "embarrassing" due to medieval torture. It was called "peinliche Befragung", or "painful questioning". If you feel uncomfortable with a topic, it could be painful to answer. Or "a pain" to answer. Pain-like. Peinlich. Pijnlijk... :)

[@dontxtalk]

I struggled so much with German in high school, your grammar is... well... pijnlijk. French was easier! But I can read it though, when words are similar enough :)

[@ookiemand]

That is the way I attempt to speak to my neighbours, I use old Dutch :) Actually I use Old Dutch here too, and despise the increasing mixing and displacement of my language by English. Here nearly everybody is replacing Dutch words with English words almost every other sentence. Some folk don't even recall the Dutch words for ordinary things any more. I thought we're supposed to embrace diversity, but if everyone starts to speak English all the time, where is the diversity then? I'm always looking forward to going to another country to see and hear the local culture and language, but with Mc Donalds etc everywhere everything start to look and feel the same and very boring.

[@Daelaron]

Haha, yeah I feel the same. Globalization is mostly a good thing in my opinion. But of course it has its dark sides as well. We should all just treasure our heritage in a healthy manner, preserving some traditions and the language. I have no problems with English, other than that it is obviously inferior to proper German grammar and pronunciation... haha ;) ...but jokes aside, I do think that every language has its merits and should be preserved. Losing them would mean losing SO MUCH culture and history. If I could turn back time, I'd learn Plattdeutsch from my grandma...

[@noahmyg]

yooo ich komm auch aus owl

[@Daelaron]

@@noahmyg Coole Sache :D

[@BarnOwl61]

For most Dutch, like myself, understanding German isn't difficult. When both participants are a little patient, they understand each other just fine. Growing up I visited German speaking countries a lot, that made it even better. The big shock came learning to write proper German in high school. Writing German was, and still is, complicated. In many things the Dutch and Germans are alike. I always feel very "at home" in German speaking countries. As you explained we decent from Germanic origin.

[@AndrewAddisonUniqueDrewski980]

I like Dutch way better than German. German are still good people. German/Dutch are similar, but not at all the same. Germanic is not German. Germanic is a branch of other countries/languages under which most people fail to realize.

[@goebelmasse]

Writing German is complicated for many Germans too, and most Germans aren't able to do it. It is an overcomplicated orthography, and to make learning how to write German more painful, there are incredible unintuitive rules for the capitalization of a word, hard to explain and hard to learn. We write substantives capitalized, as in "die Sonne scheint". And a verb can be used in substantive form, as in "das Scheinen der Sonne". As I was young, I hoped for an orthographic reform eliminating these complex capitalization rules at least, but I will die and that insanity will persist. And after the reform of the reform of the reformed orthographic reform most Germany aren't able to spell anymore. To a German, Dutch sometimes looks like German without all the bullsh*t and with a much more regular and easy to learn orthography. That little source of confusion with "ij" and "ei", and these strange vocalic polytongs like "eeuw" are nothing compared to the infernal chaos of German orthography.

[@BassBoostingBrony]

@@goebelmasse Wahre Worte! Echte woorden mijn vriend

[@heikevieth8229]

@@goebelmasse it's quite simple actually. If you can put an article before the word, it's a noun and capitalised. The "verb" you gave as a counterexample is actually a noun (gerund to be precise) as indicated by the article. Names, things or objects (physical or abstract) are always capitalised. I've never had a problem with it.

[@azuregriffin1116]

@@goebelmasse I study German, and that is one of the least awkward things about it.

[@kaidrache2395]

As a German I find it pretty easy to understand written Dutch. Or at least the general gist of it. A bunch of words are close enough that I'm at least capable of understanding the meaning. Doesn't work always as both languages share a bunch of false friends - words that sound very, very similar, but have a total different meaning. Spoken Dutch is a completely different animal though. Usually I can't follow a conversation except some odd words that are clear enough to understand. A colleague of mine who was born in the Netherlands has been in Germany for more than 30 years and he experienced the same vice versa. The solution is quite simple - both Dutch and Germans usually just switch to English ;) Tot ziens!

[@randomstuffs7648]

Me too

[@angiew4544]

I agree

[@PatrickOstfront]

When I am in the Netherlands I feel like a dog. I can understand everything but can not talk. 😉 🐩

[@keats5791]

Hahaha

[@sehabel]

I'm from the south of germany (Baden-Württemberg) and it's very hard for me to understand dutch people at all. But this is also the case for north germans, so I don't fell ashamed for that. 😂 At least I'm able to talk with bavarians, swiss and austrians.

[@Tyler-zz2ny]

@@sehabel I am from Hamburg and have no problem in understanding most dutch dialects.

[@MrAbagaz]

@@sehabel So you cant understand north germans easily?

[@sehabel]

@@MrAbagaz Most germans speak standard German, and when north germans speak standard German, I can understand them flawlessly. The problem here is, that every German dialect has some crucial words which are very hard to understand. For example the different words for "sprechen", which means "to speak": North German: schnacken Swabian (my dialect): schwätzen Standard German: sprechen And the pronunciation is also very different, so when they speak very fast it's a bit overwhelming

[@Me1le]

I remember a joke image with a mystery language, and the question below it asking what language it was. All the Germans said it was Dutch and the Dutch said it was German. Turned out it was a fake language carefully created to be somewhere between Dutch and German just to rile us all up. (I myself thought it was Luxembourgish :P )

[@rhbb8796]

Why go through the hassle of making up some mystery intermediate language when they simply could've used Kölsch

[@S404_44]

Do you have a link to that?

[@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus]

Can you link it? This sounds very interesting! :D

[@rhbb8796]

Just enter it in the KZbin search bar, there should be plenty of examples. General information on the greater dialect group is here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripuarian_language

[@mikeyking3670]

+

[@deldarel]

Native Dutchman hier. I studied German in high school. Because I was taught Latin and Greek before that, I didn't have trouble with the noun cases at all. The biggest trouble I had was with word order or false friends. I can understand about 40% of german spoken at a reasonable pace. Too bad German is never spoken at a reasonable pace. I think I would have liked the language a lot more if I had a halfway decent teacher. Now I'm relearning the language on Duolingo. Die Eule hat Hunger.

[@dianawoo7653]

Die Eule hat Hunger HHahahah Danke Duolingo!

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

If you're Dutch why is your English terrible? I don't get it

[@ichverrateeuchmeinennamenn7898]

Aber ich habe keine Eule

[@googleaccount3112]

Niederländisch wird auch nie in einem angenehmen Tempo gesprochen

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@Emile.gorgonZola - His English is perfect as far as I can discern.

[@RubentLam]

I am Dutch. I have had two years of standard German in Grammar School. However, in the sixty’s when I was some 5 years old I had already started to pick up German during holidays with my parents. During one holiday in Czechoslovakia, I talked a lot with elderly locals who could still speak some German dialect. All contact was in the spoken dialect. I even obtained some feeling for using the right genders and the right cases. I still use this experience for loose conservation with German people, but German people have been asking me if I were Russian.

[@norbertderiro9458]

When I was in the Netherlands for the first time, I saw a sign that read "Videorecorder huren" and I thought there were porn movies to rent.

[@reptilesceptile1035]

Norbert de Riro lol

[@wrtlpfmpf]

Yeah, one of those wonderful false cognates.

[@erikvandoorn1674]

How did you find out they weren't?????

[@leprof6491]

@@erikvandoorn1674 Nice question

[@SeverityOne]

You need to rent a VCR first, before you can rent those videos.

[@pascalf9602]

I'm from Cologne and understand dutch 90% of the time i hear it. Eventough i never learned it. Grüße liebe Holländer :D

[@storrho]

Man cologne, what a weird place. What is it, French? Dutch? German? nobody knows.

[@pascalf9602]

@@storrho NA?

[@oXSimonXo]

@@storrho Cologne is a German city with a long former Roman history located in an area close to the Netherlands and Belgium - therefore similar dialects across both languages and good accessibility for intercultural tourism.

[@xomina7646]

It’s a german city :)

[@frogeater9585]

Ahahhaha Grüße liebe Holländer is German

[@kenbray5682]

I'm American and speak German, and when I hear someone speaking Dutch I instantly know it's Dutch and only understand bits and pieces.... Love both languages ! and both countries as well ! 🇺🇸🇩🇪🇳🇱

[@PierreDole]

Try Low German, its sounds and looks like a "missing link" beween German and English. :)

[@kenbray5682]

Pierre Dole Thanks my friend for the advice ! But how do I look it up ? On Google Translate or just google to define it for me ? You have a great day a friend from the United States , I learned German while I was stationed there in the military, I was able to pick it up fast ! I also speak Spanish and Italian...... Ciao Amico... Italian Auf Wiedersehen Mein feund... German I'm sure you knew that Adios Amigo Spanish lol..... Ciao

[@AndrewAddisonUniqueDrewski980]

@@kenbray5682 I like Dutch way better than German. German are still good people. German/Dutch are similar, but not at all the same. Germanic is not German. Germanic is a branch of other countries languages which are Netherlands/Germany being a few and a few others which most people fail to realize.

[@libra4648]

Ken Bray I think people like me that grew up close to the dutch border will easily able to Unterstand dutch while people from Bavaria or Eastern Germany will have much more difficulties. So for you as "non native“ speaker it will hard as well i guess. But that is not a shame haha:)

[@HafdirTasare]

@@PierreDole And has also many similaritys with Dutch. Also many armish communitys in the US speak Plattdeutsch.

[@uubwillemse-jacobson5577]

Being Dutch, I thought I didn't speak German and often resorted to speaking English with Germans. I would tell them to speak German back to me though because I understood enough and it was better for my German. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to Germany again and all of a sudden I found myself talking German with Germans. I made lots of mistakes of course (like talking about church-cake instead of cherry-cake), but I was profoundly surprised to hear myself talking German nonetheless. But the main difficulty with learning German is actually the similarity to Dutch. That, and when you struggle with a language people tend to switch to English, a language that comes very naturally to most Dutch people due to our high consumption of English media.

[@AlexandraVioletta]

As a Dutch you ARE speaking German. 😉 Please don't hate me. Last time I told this some Dutch people they were going MAD at me.

[@minka0705]

Mixing up cherry and church is iconic, even Germans do that xD. My little sister still can't pronounce the 'ch' correctly, and everytime she says church I'm like cherries are out of season you can't have them now xD

[@thedam271]

@@AlexandraVioletta Als het dezelfde taal is, kan je dan even met mijn voormalige leraar duits praten van de middelbare school. Misschien is hij bereid om na al die jaren mij toch een hoger cijfer te geven aangezien ik dus blijkbaar vloeiend duits kan schrijven.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

Der Kirchenkuchen hergestellt im Vatikan: 👁👄👁

[@Erik-cw8gl]

@@AlexandraVioletta Luh, he speaks a Germanic language, not German language

[@codebeat4192]

Wow, blown away by the effort to create such video's, well done, very interesting.

[@Langfocus]

Thank you!

[@sierraclub26]

@@Langfocus Happy new year and congratulations for this video and all previous ones. I learnt in the comments that even dutch or flemish people had eventually some difficulties to learn german and that there's not 70 % of dutch people totally fluent. I gave this information to my french-speaking nephew that is learning german in order to reassure him but he already knew it. By the way, you should take a look to a channel called "masaman". The subject is about different ethnicities in the world and difference of skin color inside the same country like India for example. It's very complementary from your channel.

[@dimitris779]

My thoughts exactly fantastic

[@ericwood3709]

Plurals don't take apostrophes.

[@gabrielcrutchfield3718]

My knowledge of Dutch definitely helped me when I studied German.

[@kokofan50]

I haven’t studied Dutch, but knowing some German has helped me when I’ve run across Dutch.

[@piwithatsme]

For me it was both a blessing and a curse. Sure they are similar, but you can never completely trust similar sounding words. I got laughed at a few time for messing up, haha

[@xavierzamora6455]

I am doing the opposite

[@colinclarke4285]

Odd you should say that...I speak Dutch with a reasonable amount of fluency and I can understand SOME spoken German... although I read German better than hearing it spoken

[@joelniv6718]

Ich lerne auch Deutsch. Ist dir die Sprache schwer gefallen?

[@simplynotedible]

As a Dutch speaker, I remember my time in CustServ when I had a conversation with a German speaker on the phone. For legal reasons, I wasn't allowed to speak any other language than Dutch (contractual legalese stuff), and my German isn't anywhere near good enough anyway to know all the legal subtleties, but we managed to have a good conversation with me speaking Dutch and him speaking German. A couple of clarifications were needed here and there, and we both took our time double-checking if both parties were on the same page, but it was perfectly doable.

[@sjappiyah4071]

simplynotedible that’s awesome haha

[@neillester6457]

I never knew the order in which the words are said can be quite different to English. My mind was blown. It's weird as the way you guys say it seems incredibly alien to me as English as my only real language.

[@andypre1667]

@@neillester6457 Read what Mark Twain said about the German language... ;-)

[@dogechallenger4994]

@james c Many germans can.

[@nowvoyager8438]

@james c Yes, you can say that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are practically one language, only with different dialects. They are North Germanic languages and belong to the East Nordic Group. Islandic is a North Germanic language too but belongs to the West Nordic Group and due to its isolation (Iceland is an island after all) the language did not develop very much and is so somehow different compared to the others.

[@EdgarHernandez-dq4vj]

Contrary to stereotypes, I actually think German sounds quite soft and soothing to the ear. Dutch sounds a lot harsher in comparison

[@GamingLife076]

depends, in the south we dont use those ridiculous hard G's and R's , just the morons up north, they sound like they have a pube down their throat.

[@simondavidras4738]

I'm dutch and I have to say, German isn't as aggressive sounding as dutch, we have a hard G

[@EdgarHernandez-dq4vj]

@@simondavidras4738 And the trilled R

[@dirk2518]

@@EdgarHernandez-dq4vj80 years agoo german and dutch had the same rolling R. Flemish still uses the rolling R

[@JJFlashBang]

@@dirk2518incorrect, German has had a harsher R sound for centuries. The trilled R is around now, and has been for decades, but mostly in southern Germany and Austria. This is theorized to be because of the proximity to Romance and Slavic languages over hundreds of years.

[@stefanreichenberger5091]

Awesome as always, Paul! As a German native speaker I might add: "ich möchte" does not mean "I want", but "I would like". "I want" is "ich will" in German.

[@davidgo2019]

You're wrong 😅

[@SchmulKrieger]

Stefan Reichenberger, das kommt darauf an, was du sagen willst. Ich möchte ist eigentlich ein Präteritoprasens von machen. Ich mag/möchte die Kuh schlachten = I want to slaughter the cow. Mag ist ursprünglich das englische >may< und möchte das ursprüngliche >might

[@studiosnch]

Rewboss explain this quite well in explanation for his translation of Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved," here he used "Sie will geliebt werden" since there is a desired intention from the singer to love her. "Ich möchte" has a subjunctive tone into it (like, "If given the chance, I will love her.")

[@michaeljuliano8839]

@@studiosnch With that passive construction, I understand "Sie will geliebt werden" to be like "she wants to be loved" rather than having anything to do with the singer's intention. My inclination would have been to translate it, "Sie wird geliebt werden," which is, as I understand it, more literal. You may have more experience with German than I do, so I'm curious what you think of that.

[@gusjohnnson9641]

I've been learning German, and I was thinking the same thing.

[@isaacadkins2344]

I've been waiting for this video !

[@klyanadkmorr]

Das Ist Gut

[@isaacadkins2344]

@@klyanadkmorr Ja :)

[@drunkenstein6669]

me too!!! :oo

[@sjaakdewinter6258]

One day my mother wants to rent a room for German tourists. She makes a signal>>Zimmers zu Huren (kamers te huur, rooms for rent) But she don t know the word for to rent is in German vermieten. Huren means Hookers in Germany. Nobody cames to sleep there.

[@Magrat_Knoblauch]

@Sjaak De Winter xD xD

[@androlsaibot]

Sometimes, vehicles of the Dutch rental service Boels are used on German building sites. Some of them have the Dutch slogan "verhuurt bijna alles" translated to German, some don't. This looks funny for Germans.

[@peterpiper7441]

We need more hookers anyway, so it was nice of your mother to rent rooms to them. :)

[@fanolade]

Haha lol

[@holz6661]

In German there is a cognate: heuern. Means zu hire (an English cognate) people...,e.g. hire sailors...

[@Paulfighteronline]

I'm Dutch and I studied German in high school and during my exchange semester in Berlin (passed the Goethe C1 exam there). The high lexical similarity mentioned in the video definitely helps when learning German as a Dutch person. Before I moved to Germany for 6-7 months I had trouble improving my German speaking skills. Reading, listening and writing were much easier. Having to take into account the cases when speaking German was something I struggled with. Once I was immersed in a German speaking environment, the cases suddenly became clear, it just clicked

[@deldarel]

Back when I was little and we just got our first DVD player, I wanted to watch Asterix and Obelix on a saturday morning. I was confused why a DVD sold in the Netherlands would only have French and German on it. That's how I found out that Nederlands in English is Dutch.

[@Thindorama]

Pixie Panda Plush But he wouldn’t have learnt what he learnt.

[@sion8]

@@pixiepandaplush I agree wholeheartedly! Here in North America (or maybe the whole of the Americas) the menus are in English, however I've noticed with Disney made DVDs and Blu-Rays and pretty much no one else that after the FBI warning, but before anything plays they'll ask the language written in the native form [English, _française,_ and _español,_ sometimes also _português_ ] and then the trailers play in that language (dubbed and/or subtitled). I'm glad this happens for people that don't know much English, but I'm not sure if this happens in Europe. Although if it does, which languages would it ask over there? I'm sure at least English, French, and German.

[@deldarel]

@Cáca Milis sa Seomra Spraoi Yup, but usually you can choose between Nederlands and Français rather than Dutch and French. I still think it's odd that they gave the language select screen a different language (English) than either of the languages that the movie was available in. 10-year-old me who didn't speak English yet thought 'Dutch' meant 'German' because we call it Duits.

[@TheRubinho96]

I remember in my first English class ever in primary school, one of the first questions the teacher asked (in Dutch) was: "does anyone know what's the English translation of 'Nederlands' (Dutch)?" Some kid in my class answered "Dutch" and I was thinking like "what an idiot, Dutch obviously means Duits (German)". But the teacher said he was correct, and I was so shocked and confused as to why Dutch was English for "Nederlands" instead of "Duits"

[@worldwideweekend24]

Another funny difference: "verkocht" wich means sold in dutch and overcooked in german.

[@jolly3807]

"Zerkocht" means overcooked. Not "verkocht".

[@Scaramiy1a]

Tartarus both versions are correct “verbraten” “zerkocht” “verkocht” -> all mean overcooked

[@semira4161]

Verkauft means verkocht

[@MrAhmedUA]

@@Scaramiy1a yeah sometimes ver ~= done zer ~= overly done

[@geheimnisvollerundbelanglo9396]

verkocht means "cooked away", it doesn't have a negative conotation

[@bertdejonghe3303]

As being Flemish living in Germany, my experience is that it is easier for a Flemish to understand German than the other way around.

[@Frank-dv7ji]

Maybe because you live there and hear it all the time. That is not my experience when I meet Germans speaking Plattdeutsch, by chance let's say in France or Brussels.

[@HesseJamez]

I'm German and felt the same vice versa

[@billyadams2651]

@@HesseJamez your language is german but what dialect of german is your language

[@HesseJamez]

@@billyadams2651 Northern Hessian/Thuringian (pretty rare)

[@billyadams2651]

@@HesseJamez do you speak standard german hochdeutsch

[@dominik6375]

I’m German, but I currently live in the Netherlands and thus I’m learning Dutch. I actually live right next to that place you use as a background at 12:53 which is kinda cool haha. For me the biggest challenge when it comes to learning Dutch definitely is pronunciation bc the vowels and consonants are pronounced slightly different, the g works fine, but as opposed to English or French I feel like I have to focus a lot more on pronunciation of single letters to not sound foreign. On a brighter note I can almost always guess the meaning of Dutch words because they relate to an old German or less commonly used form of a German word, so I agree with the 84% similaritz although I think that it’s easier this way around than for Dutch people to guess German words. For me Dutch feels like it lies somewhere between English and German and hence it’s easier for me to guess words bc I know the two extreme ends if that makes sense. Like for example the Dutch “ik ben bang” relates to German “mir ist bange” which to me sounds really old fashioned or idiomatic so you’d say “ich habe Angst” where Angst means fear, also in Dutch. Whereas it might be a bit more difficult for a Dutch person to guess a words meaning like “excuus” in Dutch is really close to the English excuse, so easily understandable for me if I’m confronted with it whereas in German it means “Entschuldigung” which might not be as easily distinguishable for Dutch speakers as the word excuse. But in the meantime I think it makes learning Dutch for me more difficult bc I am less motivated to actually learn the vocabulary bc I know that I understand most of it without memorising it but when I need to come up with the word myself I can’t bc it is still different to the German word and idk how so. So my laziness makes me guess words 90% of the time I speak Dutch.

[@realdanksta2237]

Entschuldigung is similar to verontschuldiging, which means apology. That's one way to decipher it.

[@ronald3836]

I had a German colleague living in NL and speaking Dutch quite well complain to me that the waiter in a restaurant had pretended not to understand him when he had asked for a "vater". I had no idea what he was talking about: vater??, vader?? So he meant "water" and it turned out he was unable to hear a difference between "vater" and "water", whereas the difference to my ears is as clear as... water!

[@picobello99]

You missed one of the most obvious differences: in German all nouns are written with a capital. While in Dutch we don't even write names of months and days of the week with a capital.

[@celinameelker1631]

I mean, its not grammatically correct to write names and months without a capital letter, but who cares about dutch grammar am i right

[@MartijnCoppoolse]

@@celinameelker1631 Wrong. In Dutch it’s actually grammatically incorrect to write the names of days and months *with* a capital letter - except at the start of a sentence.

[@celinameelker1631]

@@MartijnCoppoolse i must have missed some dutch lessons then XD i never use capital letter anyway, even though im dutch

[@AndreasAntoniusMaria]

@@celinameelker1631 VMBO klant?

[@celinameelker1631]

@@AndreasAntoniusMaria havo*

[@richardberry5984]

Your questions at the end are intriguing. I am a native English speaker (American dialect, of course), and both my parents spoke German when I was growing up. I took years and years of German in school, married a German woman, and then got stationed in Germany for eight years. Then I bought a couple of Dutch war movies, just for fun. The amazing thing was, I could mostly understand the Dutch speakers in the movies, even without the subtitles! So, it became apparent to me that Dutch truly is the middle language between English and German.

[@XEinstein]

You'd be surprised to learn then that in the Netherlands there is another official language called Frisian. It sits perfectly in the middle between Dutch and English, so if you Google for it a bit you'd probably be surprised how much you will understand that language

[@JuiCeBoX19]

My Dutch friends! German here. Your language is so cute! Most of the words are familiar. But then you put a funny little affix on them like -tje oder -lijk. Go for it!

[@DonMas-car-pone]

Autootje Bootje Kusje Knoopje Huisje Patatje Flesje Lichtje Mandje

[@xMrAngelZx]

Did you know that the word “cookie” is derived from the Dutch word “koekje”? A lot of American English words have a Dutch origin.

[@smashculturalmarxism6320]

@@DonMas-car-pone kutje

[@smashculturalmarxism6320]

Snapje

[@rubenb8653]

@@DonMas-car-pone Butje

[@kathryncarter6143]

Excelente intro. The information here is enough to blow anyone away. I find all of your videos to have serious quality. You have so much knowledge to share.

[@darioasencio7458]

Wow. Now I understand where words like 'tedesco' ('German' in Italian) or 'Tyskland' ('Germany' in Swedish) come from, the protogermanic 'theudisk'

[@ImaginatorJoren]

Darío Asencio Ojeda WHOA I wonder how that word is pronounced?

[@ImaginatorJoren]

Overweight Grandma theudisk

[@babygamingyt4556]

Tedesco????? Schalke 04 head Coach???????

[@ICXCTSARSLAVY]

Wow...I always wondered about that. Thanks for the info!

[@cho1810pin]

Also in French : teuton (German, pejorative), or thiois (refers to the Flemish dialect)

[@Marco_Onyxheart]

In Dutch, "pijnlijk" can also mean "embarassing", but it is often imagined to be physically painful. Like when you "burn" someone with words, you diss them, then that burn is painful. Other than that, everything seemed very accurate to me. You did your research well.

[@lukasfeldmann6646]

And likewise, "peinlich" in German also can mean "painful" (there is also the noun "die Pein", meaning "the pain"), but in this sence, the word is almost only used in rather archaic contexts. For example there is "die peinliche Befragung", literally "the painful interview", meaning (historic) torture (e.g. by the inquisition).

[@eurovisionsongcontestSWZ]

I'm Greek and I learn German 3-4 years. German is beautiful language but also Dutch looks amazing... Greece love Germany and Netherlands 🇬🇷❤🇩🇪❤🇳🇱.

[@ashleyftcash]

Thats really sweet! Thank you!

[@LowEntropyy]

Greece are turks with another religion

[@arthurhistder1156]

Actually the persons say dutch Is easier than german

[@eurovisionsongcontestSWZ]

@@arthurhistder1156 I don't know but German is easy and beautiful language :)

[@tp3725]

Where is our money

[@marchauchler1622]

We are very similar. It took less than 6 months to be fully fluent in Dutch. I also studied French and Spanish and it took years to master the French language and to get by in Spanish. Groetjes to my Dutch neighbours.

[@patrickinnerlohinger1747]

I'm german and as a child i really enjoyed reading the dutch translation for instruction when buying new things like electronics. It always looked like a very silly german dialect for me when reading it. When listening to it it really feels like a mix between a northern german dialect and english. I can only understand it when the sentences are simple or when they speak really slowly. And of course i dont understand everything. For example the sentence @16:08 would seem like "When i had enough money, i bought a new car" to me. Thats mostly because of "had", which is similiar to the past of have in german and in english "hatte/had". And because of "Als", which in german only means "When", but in past tense. Keep your video as great as they are, i really really enjoy them!

[@ryoushii]

As a native English Speaker who speaks German I concur. Dutch sounds like a North American English speaker speaking German very badly.

[@hunnic4419]

Þeodisc mann hæl hwæt þu namma?

[@MBeckers]

As a Dutchman I usually accidentally read "wenn" as "when" in English because I'm used to "als" being "if". This issue also occurs with the word "also" in German since "also" in English is different from "also" in German.

[@jamievlip]

Fun fact: In Limburg at the border both in the Netherlands and Belgium we share a very similar dialect that is a mix of German and Dutch, Using Ich and Dich and such within the Dutch language

[@rangvi1956]

@@RobertvanGeenen : de höbs geliek ! Groete vaan 'n rasechte Mestreechse die allang in Fraankriek woent mèh die nog steeds heimwee heet noa höär sjoen geleefd Mestreech !

[@rangvi1956]

Joa de höbs geliek ; groete vaan 'n echte Limburgse (Mestreechse ) in Fraankriek !

[@ldblokland463]

As a native Dutch speaker, I can understand German when read and spoken, but can't say stuff back.

[@0799qwertzuiop]

Just talk back with a slow pace in Dutch they msot liely get what you mean ... or just speak English with them.

[@LaWendeltreppe]

I have got it the same way, only that I as a German can understand dutch when I read it, but I cannot say a word, except for god dag and tot ziens.

[@ewoudvanaalst4089]

Precies dat

[@headmgCREW]

Same for me , im german

[@headmgCREW]

@Thatshow ED yeah ( sorry for replying in english then , but everybody understands it like this ) its actually quiet funny that we understand each other , but cant do a “full“ conversation with speaking this language :D

[@Bonky-wonky]

Funny story (for me at least), I rode bmx for a while before switching to mountainbiking. The owner of the shop where I usually bought my stuff had a lot of German contacts, both clients and suppliers. I once heard him have a conversation with some German client and he literally spoke Dutch to the guy but with a German-ish accent. No regard whatsoever for grammar, lingual differences etc but apparently they could understand each other well enough to do business..

[@carelgoodheir692]

We emigrated to Scotland from Utecht when I was 7, long ago, and I learnt German (and a bit of Yiddish) since. Scots dialect is closer to Dutch and German than standard English is. It was the addition of a huge numbers of French words that changed English, and that affected Scotland less. In Burn's 'Tam o Shanter' the witch's granny had "koft" her her short underskirt (kaufte = bought in German). The chapman had "smoort" in the snow (smoort = suffocated in Dutch). A historic murder in the Middle Ages at the top of Scottish society - a nobleman said he'd finish the victim off by saying he'd "gang mak sikker" (that so close to 'go make sure' in Dutch and German). There are lots and lots of other examples.

[@Bengedoes]

cool

[@michaeltucker8113]

My personal favorite false cognate? Bellen. In Dutch, it’s the verb to make a telephone call. In German, it’s a dog barking. 😂😂🍽

[@danan2721]

Bel (borrowed from Dutch bellen) is used in traditional Betawi (an original tribe from Greater Area Jakarta, Indonesia) dialect, too.

[@FeuerblutRM]

Maybe it was also a shift? Because "bellen" (Dutch) sounds at least similar to "wählen" (Deutsch) Whereas "bellen" (Deutsch) literally is a dog's call ;)

[@iceomistar4302]

In English, we have the word Bellow which is a cognate.

[@aimeenoawaning5402]

Don't forget klarkommen xD

[@latifhajjari5132]

Mij favoriete is poepen. In dutch it means taking a shit In belgium IT means having sexy Hahahaha

[@krupam0]

"German cases make the language difficult to learn" *laughs in Slav*

[@Doppelgalgen]

Minus the Bulgarians

[@patrickbatemaninwalkmani]

What do you mean

[@blackoutunit6276]

Krupam i dont understand

[@eckstravirgine9083]

We have 6 cases (at least in Russian, I'm not sure about other's)

[@Doppelgalgen]

@@eckstravirgine9083 Some (like Czech) have even seven.

[@FrancoisFranciis]

Suprisingly insightful for a Dutchman learning German, thanks!

[@gitmoholliday5764]

one mysterious difference is the Germans say "fahren" if they mean "drive" the Dutch only say "varen" if they mean traveling by a ship.. but the Dutch also use "drijven" if they point out something floating on water.

[@Quimoth]

​@@naturbursche5540 Aandrijven = antreiben. Bedrijven = betreiben. They are simply not the same words, adding a prefix shifts the entire meaning. Sturen = to steer (a car). Versturen = to send (a mail). Aansturen = to control or to head (to lead someone or a group). Some words even shift meaning with context. Aankomen = gaining weight or arriving depending on context. Komen = to come.

[@herrbonk3635]

Swedish use fara/resa/åka (go by), and gå/vandra/promenera (walk by foot). Like the dutch, we use driva/driver for things on the water, but also for driving technical things like generators, loudspeakers, transistors, just like the english. Swedes also driver companies, businesses, developments, even jokes. But we never drive a vehicle. We *kör* it. :D

[@stevenbodum3405]

@I Love Memes drijven is driften in german, but means the same.

[@stevenbodum3405]

@I Love Memes i would say that its origin is germanic, its seams to be a very old word, to old for an anglicism. a ship "driftet" in german.

[@gitmoholliday5764]

@I Love Memes The English use "drift-wood" and "drift" ashore.

[@Leemo521]

After seeing this video im quite happy that german is my birth language. I would go insane learning it

[@IMHGfk]

Absolutely agree. Which makes me think: It would be very interesting to have a study whether German kids take longer to learn to speak, than British kids for example.

[@starrider1683]

Ne-e, für mich war es gar kein Problem. Nur kann es Schwierigkeiten mit Konjunktiv geben, aber ich benutze es ganz selten.

[@angelikussupericus]

@@IMHGfk youre right, do kids learn to speak faster in "easier" languages?

[@maximilianmustermann5763]

@@IMHGfk I don't think it takes noticeably longer for kids to learn to speak. Generally, languages will become more complex over time when they are very isolated (like Icelandic or Finnish). I think it's because to the native speakers some added complexity doesn't really matter at all. They don't even notice.

[@lachesarborisov9531]

Nein, es ist nicht so schwer Deutsch zu lernen. Es ist immer ein Problem für Anfänger (wie ich) auf dem Grammatik zu achten, aber das ist nicht das schwerigste Teil der Sprache (natürlich muss man auf dem Grammatik achten, um verstanden zu sein, aber ohne Vokabeln kann man sich nicht vollpreis expressieren.

[@thirdtrysacharm6177]

As a native English speaker and someone with mediocre German, I can generally read Dutch and understand it.

[@user-ie6jr4bg1w]

Thirdtrys Acharm lachen man, kan je dit ook begrijpen? Antwoord maar in het Engels ik ben half-engels dus dat is voor mij net zo makkelijk als Nederlands

[@Chillerll]

Same for Germans with English knowlegde. Dutch often feels like a mix of German and English.

[@KaranKhannazrk]

@@user-ie6jr4bg1w I am an English speaker and I learned German in school and I can kinda understand you, let me translate and tell me how accurate I am "Cam you understand this? Answer me in English I am half English that is as " makkelijk"(I dont know what that means) for me as Dutch"

[@thirdtrysacharm6177]

@@user-ie6jr4bg1w "Can you understand (more lexically "grasp" = begrijpen) this? Answer me in English, I am half-English thus that is for me not so much like Dutch (Netherland-ish)."

[@Max-cb2ro]

@@thirdtrysacharm6177 Dat maakt het wel een beetje overdreven deftig

[@p_christoph]

I'm German and I'm currently reading my second full fledged novel in Dutch. I've never had any actual Dutch lessons, but being familiar with the linguistic background that you've explained so excellently, I enjoy the thrill of 'reading a foreign langue that I've never studied'. Of course I use the dictionary every now and again and I try to memorize as many new words as poss, but I'm now able to read consecutive pages without the dictionary. So, yes, Dutch and German are still close enough for you to embark on such a venture. I hope you don't mind one insignificant correction: at one point you mistake a subordinate object clause for a relative clause. But the statement you make about the syntax is still absolutely correct. Your presentations are splendid!!!! Herzliche Grüße, Christoph

[@iamtheusualguy2611]

As a German speaker, I was surprised at how much of written Dutch I could understand when I was there a couple of months ago. I was never really exposed to or had any formal education in the Dutch language, but I could go through the country just by reading Dutch. I visited an exchange student from Germany who went over for a year or so; we could easily have a fluent conversation where he spoke Dutch with a German accent and I spoke German back to him. In a lot of instances, you can also use your knowledge of English combined with German to get the meaning of a Dutch sentence. Natively spoken Dutch is much less recognizable though, especially if you include slang. While I'd say I could understand at least 80% of written Dutch, it drops to about 50% in spoken Dutch. And when there is a lot of noise in the background, it drops even further.

[@aswnl4428]

Important when you come to Holland and want to read signs: eu=ö, ou=au, ij=ei, oe=u. And ui only sound as ü in northern and eastern parts of NL, but very different in central, western and southern parts of NL. It's a sound I haven't found in German. Just like you mix the German ü with the English i. Alltogether, when you pronounce words well, recognition of the word in the other language is often not that difficult anymore.

[@blorkpovud1576]

"you can also use your knowledge of English combined with German to get the meaning of a Dutch sentence." Ha ha that's awesome :-)

[@sikkepitje]

As a Dutch speaker, I had a hard time learning German at school when I was a teenager, because all of the different forms of der, die, das ....

[@kokofan50]

The Germans had to keep the most annoying part of the grammar.

[@marty5915]

Same for me : German declensions were a nightmare Learning German vocabulary was also difficult because it is really different from my mother tongue (French)

[@Alien1375]

@@kokofan50 So Germans are the original Grammarnazis?

[@qh5163]

It is wasted time to learn too much of german grammar. Every german will understand it anyway. And you will automatically be better in german grammar if you speak it often or read german books. Auch gibts in D Dialekte die grammatisch anders sind, man ist also tolerant.

[@Girvid]

For me as a Dutch speaker, German is the easiest foreign language. Much easier then English.

[@jessehendry2816]

I love these two languages.

[@Nattfridur]

Late comment: The word "peinlich" (embarassing) did in Middle High German also mean "painful". It was especially related to bodily punishment and comes from the word "Pein" (Torment). Nowadays, one more meaning of "peinlich" can be "painstaking", being as carefully attentive to details that it hurts. You see, there is the pain again! ;)

[@LibraryofAcousticMagic3240]

thanks for pointing that out

[@joachimwulff8022]

Also in Dutch "pijnlijk" can mean embarassing. "Een pijnlijke vergissing" means "An embarassing mistake". We also use "pijnlijk" to mean painstaking: "pijnlijk nauwgezet" that is "painstakingly meticulous".

[@LindaCasey]

I am American who moved to the Netherlands 30+ years ago so am proficient in Dutch. I never learned German, but while traveling through the Germanic countries I could understand them well enough to get by. I was in Austria on vacation one time and got very tired of trying to speak in worse than broken German so on the last day while buying my traveling supplies, I just spoke Dutch. When I explained why to the check-out lady she looked at me quizzically and said 'Oh, was that Dutch? I just thought it was bad German!' 😎

[@tomtas6999]

Dutch and low german dialects in "drunken mode" is the same!! 😂😂 Really it is so... We love dutch language, it is like a near cousin from german.💕

[@LindaCasey]

@@tomtas6999 Yes indeed .. I always said that the Dutch language was created by a drunk German who fell across the border one day seeking phlegm producing milk looking to get sober. 😎

[@LindaCasey]

@@dibujodecroquis1684 Dutch is close enough to the lowest form of German for it to be hilarious to a native thinking you're trying to speak their language. 😁

[@tomtas6999]

@@LindaCasey 😂😂😂

[@hebneh]

Maybe you could just speak English and avoid the various complications...of course, I have no idea how many people in Europe do speak it well enough for that to work. And yes, I realize the number of English speakers and their fluency would vary a great deal.

[@epg96]

I heard that Dutch are more fluent in English than the Germans since foreign movies & shows are subbed in there while in Germany they are dubbed in Germany

[@Liansuo_Lv]

Tbh every non-german-speaking is more fluent in English.

[@Cubeforc3]

This is true. Apart from cartoons aimed at really young children, most English TV shows are subbed, never dubbed. The same goes for movies and videogames, they're almost never translated into Dutch unless aimed at

[@epg96]

@@Cubeforc3 yeah just in my country Indonesia, every foreign stuffs are subbed like Hollywood stuffs, K-Drama, animes, or whatever. Even Indonesia is surrounded by English speaking countries like Malaysia, Singapore, The Phillipines, PNG, & Australia

[@kokofan50]

It also doesn’t hurt that Dutch is more like English than German. English and Dutch still have some archaic features German has lost.

[@Ssure2]

Well, the German audience for dubbed shows is much bigger than that of the Netherlands, and I think that's why many shows don't have a Dutch dub, but a sub.

[@tatianaleutwiler1867]

You're such a good teacher, you can break very complicated things into smaller, simpler concepts and everything makes sense in the end. I enjoy your videos more than any Grammar classes I've had in my life.

[@NorthSea_1981]

He's awesome, isn't he?

[@EasyDutch]

Really nice video, Paul! Thank you for highlighting our language! 😄

[@martianingreen]

As a German who grew up near the border and went to the Netherlands often, I can say that German and Dutch are partially mutually intelligible, especially if you speak English as a second language. It's probably easier for a Dutch speaker to understand German than the other way round but if you concentrate enough and guess a bit it's definitely possible both ways especially in context.

[@MaoRatto]

I am curious... Why is it asymmetrical? From what I can tell, this is a situation of exposure?

[@doncorleole2356]

@@MaoRatto Because (my German opinion) you pronounce German the way it's written (mostly) and in Dutch there are more differences. It's a bit like Spanish (clearly pronounced) vs whatever the fuck Brazilians and especially Portuguese people are doing

[@MaoRatto]

Portuguese; The reason that trips Spainish speakers is that Ge, Gi became zh (s in leisure sound ) that loan sound in English from French words. Di and de or digraphs! Which turned them to the English Dge or J sound. A lot of the vowels raised. So o becomes /u/. The lack of L's so if you speak Italian, it is not as frustrating. Due to being clean sounding. While L's turned into glides in Portuguese so half of the vocab is jumped mostly. That is the best way I can describe Portuguese to Spanish. As the sounds are much crazier. It can be clearly read without an issue mostly. Spanish has more fricatives, but vowel clearity is maximized, Portuguese is not that!!! I would say at times feels Germanic due to everything is more stressed. Ou typically corresponds with Spanish O. Portuguese grammar reminds me more of Italian and titles.

[@staches_]

14:41 ima pause for a bit there- Did you know that the sentence: ‘Hij weet dat ik piano spelen kan.’ Also correct dutch is, tho in the order “hij weet dat ik piano kan spelen’ would be used more frequently. Dutch isnt too strict about word orders in sentences so for instance the sentence: ‘I’m going to learn Dutch today’ are correct in all these orders: ‘Vandaag ga ik Nederlands leren’ ‘Ik ga vandaag Nederlands leren’ ‘Ik ga Nederlands leren vandaag’

[@silphonym]

Interrestingly, German is in fact quite loose in it's word order as well. Though sometimes changing the word order is a way to stress some part of the sentence, which gives it a slightly nuanced meaning.

[@Alex-gp1fz]

“Nederlands, ga ik vandaag leren” kan ook

[@HoneyBadgerVideos]

@@Alex-gp1fz that is more as an answer and without the comma too. How you wrote it doesn't make much sense :)

[@ichliebebaeumeweilbaum]

It's exactly the same with German! "Heute werde ich Deutsch lernen. Ich werde heute Deutsch lernen. And: Ich werde Deutsch lernen heute." are all equivalent to each other. Though the last one would sound a little bit unnatural. If you want to emphasize the thing you are learning you can also put it at the beginning: "Deutsch werde ich heute lernen."

[@ernieee42]

@@ichliebebaeumeweilbaum "Deutsch werde ich heute lernen" would be a proper sentence, if you are talking about sceduling, maybe followed by "Morgen ist holländisch dran" (tomorrow it's time for Dutch) or "Deutsch lernen werde ich heute." In some situations or if you are weird

[@matthieuthouvenot7647]

This is nice you asked for the similarity. As a French and French native speaker, English was my second language. But I learned German at school as a third language. Every time I was on vacation in southern France, I often met Dutch people. The language sounds like German when they speak on a natural pace, but I wasn't able to understand a lot. Reading the text is much more easier as the spelling is a kind of mix between English and German (even though the pronunciation is strange for me). I love the germanic languages, and ending phrases by the verb seems logic to me now (despite we don't use this syntax neither in French nor English). Thanks to your video I discovered the differences between the German I know and Swiss German and Dutch. Both are very similar to german for a European ear, but still, we cannot understand them well. Thanks to your videos that I watch often because languages intrigue me! Continue!

[@agrippaminor771]

Another stunning piece by Paul, just the right level to keep us breathless but never too hard to follow and always informative and perceptive. My take-away from this is an insight into the murkiness of English pronunciation. As native speakers we do not notice it, but for outsiders English is to German as Spanish is to Italian, the former full of murky sounds, the latter crystal clear. In this video Paul shows that Dutch is a kind of half-way-house. Of course this is a subjective comment, but I hope it helps English speakers hear English as learners do.

[@Dethleffff]

As a german who is also quite OK in english, I feel dutch is a mixture of german, english and drunk :)

[@michielvdvlies3315]

we dont drink as much beer as you guys ;-)

[@Tflexxx02]

The usual description of Dutch is of a drunk Englishman trying to speak German. As a speaker of English and German, there is a touch of "inebriation" in Dutch.

[@konijn8672]

Drunk😂

[@1Jasmin]

And Plattdeutsch

[@Aaravos]

hou je bek Felix

[@chaepeanut9372]

When our teacher said: "Yeah Dutch... Dutchland", and we all crack laugh to death! Edit: our teacher is referring to "Deutschland", and thats Germany.. Dutch are from the Netherlands.. and i know that they're just bunch of German tribes... maybe his idea is justified.

[@GeefVis]

Xd mijn comment is dutch dus je kan het niet lezen XD

[@ItsARandomDragon]

@@GeefVis da's gewoon evil, maar best leuk

[@tontiia3413]

Wauw dat is echt amazing

[@mauritsdienske6850]

Why laugh? Dutch and Deutsch are originally the same word: an adjective meaning ‘from the people’. It are always the misinformed who laugh.

[@chaepeanut9372]

@@mauritsdienske6850 yes we know that, but come on! Netherlands is not Germany geopolitically, vice versa. We're talking about the modern times.

[@raoulherbord1345]

I was raised with these two Languages, and let me tell you that after 21 years I still get confused because they are so alike in some ways but so different in others.

[@herrbonk3635]

So how do you view low german? (As a Swede, that language feels the most close.)

[@blackadder4590]

I'm Dutch, but learning German at school was for me a piece of cake, the same for English. French was the worst language for me to learn. But keep in mind, everyone experiences learning a language differently, for some it is easy, for others it is difficult.

[@jorbenduprel]

For example, Belgians tend to be better at learning French since they’re located more closely to them and are more familiar w it than German

[@arranchace1306]

Same, i picked up English and German pretty quick, and accourding to native English and Germans i can even mimick a German/English accent to complete hide that i'm dutch, but my French is awfull, same as spanish, i can speak it enough to find my way in spain, but with realy a heavy dutch accent

[@vizeath]

I'm not a native English speaker, but let's just say I'm an English speaker.... I've been learning French for a few weeks, And for me it has been easy, Of course in the beginning I was kinda stressed, it was soooo hard to do my french listening practice, couldn't understand anything.... But I kept pushing myself, and with time, I slowly find it easier and easier.

[@Gogopakgogo]

Spoken French is night mare 😭😭😭

[@sirbonobo3907]

@@jorbenduprel only the francophone ones not the flames.

[@polemeros]

I am an English speaker. I learned enough German to read it,, part of my graduate studies for my doctorate. But I occasionally had to consult articles written in Dutch, which I had not been taught. I handled it by reading the Dutch text out loud and imagining that I was listening to a drunken German. And it worked ok ;)

[@annypenny8621]

polemeros really funny 😂...gute Strategie...👍🏻

[@lucyfrye5365]

Extraordinarily well researched. Flawless as far as I can tell. Thanks for the effort.

[@mastim6617]

13:57 In (older) Dutch, you can also say: “Ik wil de Piano spelen kunnen.” Its grammatically correct, but nearly no one uses it.

[@germaineeeeeeeee]

That's because it sounds weird.

[@mastim6617]

@@germaineeeeeeeee which is the reason germans use it😎

[@GaertnerJan]

South of the Rhine it is still quite common in a lot of areas. I use that word order all the time and I'm in my twenties.

[@mastim6617]

@@GaertnerJan oh, i guess I'm Just used to noord holland

[@Superrichy261985]

@@mastim6617 We Germans love to complicate our grammar as much as possible

[@maartjewaterman1193]

When I was a child and I often stayed with my grandparents who lived close to the German border, and every household there had the German TV on all day long on sundays, which was not the case in the Netherlands. In those days we only had TV in de evening. Without realizing it, I picked up so much German that I not just kind of 'feel' when to use the proper case but my pronounciation was and still is, so good that Germans often think that I am a native German speaker. When they do notice a slight accent, they assume that's due to a German dialect they are not familiar with. I am not claiming that therefor my German is perfect, far from that, but I can say that I am quite fluent in the language without having it ever been taught at school. But then again, foreign langages come easy to me and are one of my interests coz even though I was in my thirties when I started taking Italian classes, Italians also think I am a native speaker with a slight accent coming from a dialect they don't know. The same is the case with French and English speakers from the UK often think that I am an American and vice versa. Too bad I when I was young I was not aware of that given talent coz looking back I would have loved to study linguistics,

[@Ned-Ryerson]

Reverse for me, to some extent. I lived in Limburg for 3 years, but went to the NATO school in Brunssum, so was only ever surrounded by German speakers socially. My Dutch came exclusively from television, and there, often from Belgian channels. Nevertheless, my pronunciation is limburgs. These days, I have forgotten most, but every time I am back, a LOT of it will come back to me.

[@Nyerguds]

-Was sagen Sie? -Plankjes, meneer. Plankjes.

[@Nathlyyyy]

Waarom moest ik hierom lachen

[@LycanthropiesSpell]

-Achtung !!!! -Ken dr mo zeevn...

[@sakurablossom1645]

HAHAHA

[@fizzbee5137]

Wahah p l a n k j e s. Ik ben Nederlands maar het klinkt gwn raar.

[@SandsOfArrakis]

Brandhout.

[@TheKickboxingCommunity]

Never call frysian a dialect when you are in Friesland. I wondered if this was true and tried it. Almost got into a big bar fight. Shits weird yo

[@victorfergn]

If you call frysian a dialect then you have to call dutch a dialect too.

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

@@victorfergn that would be safer :P

[@jodofe4879]

No, Frisian is a seperate language group entirely that is closely related to English. But there are different dialects of Frisian. There are several different ones in the Dutch province of Friesland, and a few more in Germany and Denmark. Sadly, the Frisian languages are quickly dying out though.

[@victorfergn]

@@jodofe4879 you can say the same thing about english, spanish and french.

[@Nathlyyyy]

Friesland is een apart land, dat hoort er niet bij

[@rogierbrussee3460]

I am a native Dutch speaker, but I learned German in school and lived in Germany for many years. German is considerably more complex than English or Dutch. A lot of that complexity is the mentioned conjugated cases and like others mentioned, the gender of words. Fortunately Germans are fairly tolerant of small grammatical mistakes when you speak the language, making some mistakes themselves. However once you get the hang of it German is a rich, expressive, and subtle language, slightly more so than English. It is also melodious and I find it easier to pronounce than English, even though you need to work at the consonants. On a personal note, one of the many sad consequences of the war is that (at least in the Netherlands), the German language has become strongly associated with Nazis and soldiers. While intellectually I knew that it is a "Kultursprache" (a language of high culture) and having long been an admirer of German "Lieder" (German poetry set to music by some of the greatest composers, in a seemingly simple, but in reality very subtle way, see e.g. kzbin.info/www/bejne/a4G0paOZlJqEfqs ). it took some time for me to overcome this, by hearing parents play and say sweet things to their children, talking about everyday things or work. Even today, though, a friendly lady asking for my "Ausweis" (ID) in a hotel, gives me a bit of a shudder, because of the many movies where asking for an "Ausweis" by a menacing German soldier meant danger.

[@Chrissy717]

I'm gonna be honest, the last part made me laugh (I'm German) And it's sad to hear what the Nazis caused... However it's nice to hear there are still people out there who think like this when it comes to the German language. And btw., yes, yes we have a ton of grammar errors when we speak and I definitely won't judge anybody of his German is not on point. It's really the opposite, I admire people who are not native German speakers but still can form a bit more complex sentences.

[@vchiu9560]

I am a French native speaker and learned Latin and German at school at the same time . French being a complex language and Latin coming with declensions made actually learning German not that a difficult task, altough I would never claim to speak he language well. I share your view about German being a Kultursprache and I also regret the bad image brought over by the sad story of the NS-Zeiten. For many wrong reasons, German is only taught in a minority of school classes in France and maybe less than 5% of the Population is able to speak it. This is also thanks to learning German (and English) that I can have some understanding of written Dutch. However, I really struggle when listening to Dutch conversation. Maybe as much as with Schwytzerdütsch

[@paavobergmann4920]

Thank you. And don´t bother too much about consonant pronunciation. Just mumble, like we do all the time. Hardly anyone but news anchors has good pronunciation. Or grammar, for that. And yes, it is very sad how much bad feelings, associations, and generally bad vibes still persist from the two World Wars, and linked horrors. And very understandably so. What can i say? German soldiers were, all in all, not exactly fishing for compliments. Very, very sad. Even in germany, officialese still always carries a menacing undertone, and some formerly perfectly normal phrases are hardly ever used anymore. 12 years reign of terror caused damage for centuries.

[@BrianStanleyEsq]

During a short stay in (mostly) northeastern Germany a few years ago, I was eager to use my rusty college German. People would just give me a slightly pained, slightly indulgent look and say "Please to speak in English!" Sometimes their English was better (no doubt better than my German) and they left out the prepositions. I don't think my grammar and accent were really that bad. The feeling I got was more like, "English is the lingua franca now. You speak it, I speak it, so if you want to communicate, let's just use it."

[@rogierbrussee3460]

I know what you mean, Its even stronger here in the Netherlands. I know native speakers (and non native speakers) who say they never really get to speak Dutch because everybody just answers back in Dutch. I lived in Germany, however, and since my German became quite functional and I have "nur ein ganz leichtes Rudi Carell Akzent" (just a minor accent) it soon became natural to speak German in German company.

[@drunkenmmamaster419]

I absolutely love this channel man !!!! You make things like this alot easier to understand and aren't in your face about it

[@dr.linguadr.lingua9374]

The funny thing is dutch has the older pronunciation but german the older grammar. The icelandic grammar and german are pretty the same

[@mihanich]

No, icelandic grammar is even more conservative than German. I'd say it's grammar is halfway between German and Russian in terms of complexity.

[@ronaldderooij1774]

Well, not quite true. I think the Dutch grammar is extremely old. Dutch is very conservative. Yes, we dropped the case forms in 1945, but we only had that for 100 years to resemble latin more and lift the people up to higher standards or something like that. the 1000 years before that, Dutch stayed remarkably the same.

[@ProductofWit]

German is the one with the quirkiest phonology. They are to Germanic what Polish is to Slavic. Their grammar though is archaic. Sitll wouldn't call German harder, necessarily. Dutch is a bit quirky in its own right with all those clitic forms for instance. And what Ronald says is true too, Modern Dutch resembles Middle Dutch more than Modern German resembles Middle High German. Our language is remarkably conservative.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@mihanich, nope. The grammar of Icelandic isn't that archaic. Just look at the syntax which can have an effect on the meaning of the sentence, where Icelandic just have one sentence structure.

[@dr.linguadr.lingua9374]

@@ProductofWit yeah man I totally agree ^^

[@VeronicaMcCarrison]

I can’t speak either language but find it is very educational

[@ericwood3709]

I know German pretty well, but haven't tried learning Dutch. It sounds so freaking weird to me! I'm more comfortable tackling Russian!

[@paardenslager868]

Eric Wood Russian’s got some Dutch influence in there.

[@ericwood3709]

@@paardenslager868 Нет.... НЕТ! Этого не может быть!))

[@glebkhrapov6197]

@@ericwood3709 and u are russian?

[@ericwood3709]

@@glebkhrapov6197 Nope! American.

[@renskedunnewold1995]

I am Dutch and have a minor in German, but boy was it hard to get. I can read German no problem, but I can't speak it for shit. While I completely understand how the cases work, it is so hard to put it into practice in spoken word. What trippes me up mostly though is noun gender. There is just no way to know what gender a word is. Sure, there are some guidelines for what words are usually of a certain gender, but c'mon. Mädchen, girl, is neutral? (Yes I know it's because of -chen, but still). Similarly, I struggle with remembering what verbs are strong. There are just so many exceptions or rule-less rules! With love, because I do genuinely like the language despite its difficulty, German is just pretentious Dutch. ;)

[@daanwindt1633]

"meisje" is also neutral

[@MrStubbs8157]

Strange isnt it? Same with speaking english. Sure you also hear the dutch accent, but we germans have a harder time in general....also to speak fluently and with a good variety or sofisticated. When you see those english words, you can also see the similarity to us. After all we are all kind of the same heritage ultimatly. The only border you can kind of draw is the italian/spanish/portugese.

[@Sh3rrr]

@@daanwindt1633 Thanks for the observation that made me remember something, indeed 'het meisje' in Dutch is neutral too. From what I've noticed in Dutch you also have to know what words are neutral or common gender for sentences like: Dat is een mooie kat (de kat), Dat is een mooi paard (het paard) where there's an 'e' after mooi depending on the gender of the word it modifies in certain circumstances. I guess it's easier to be a native speaker so you don't actively have to think about the gender and how that influences the rest of the sentence.

[@digitalbrentable]

@@Sh3rrr 'de' vs 'het' is the main pain the arse with Dutch, but also an inconsequential one. When you mess it up, everyone still understands you - your sentence just sounds wrong. In my experience, learning to differentiate between the two is just a matter of getting familiar enough with the language that it starts to sound wrong to you too. What a bullshit rule, eh? Not that I should talk, as a native English speaker; we have more than our fair share of useless bullshit rules.

[@Honigtod]

"Mädchen" is neutral because of the -chen, as -chen marks a diminutive --> it's a "kleine Maid" (little maiden), and in german diminutives always get neutral gender no matter what the original gender is.