Old English Language | Can American, Australian, and Non-Native English speaker understand it? | #2

[@Ecolinguist]

Old English vs German | the video is ready! 🙀 → kzbin.info/www/bejne/iXezc32IoKuJisU

[@hildegerdhaugen7864]

I am a Norwegian and figured them all out immediately.

[@onbedoeldekut1515]

No to 'understanding'. It would have been some etymological root of the current words 'verstehen' and 'versed' (i.e. being well-versed in a subject). That should've been an easy one to get right.

[@______IV]

@8:12 You pointed out that "hāl" cognates with the word whole, and I think in this context it means healthy? But I just read "hāl" phonetically as hale, which also means healthy in English. Is that a coincidence?

[@benanjerris6744]

I lowkey wanna be in a video if you ever redo this. Ain't really got a channel or anything but I'm down to hop on a video chat and just flow with it. I'm german btw :)

[@Alex-hz2xg]

Also isn’t hāl connected somehow to the word “heil” meaning salvation or in dutch “heilig” meaning holy.

[@vast634]

Bottom line: anyone speaking a modern Germanic language (be that German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic etc) would understand old English better than a modern English speaker.

[@marchauchler1622]

True. It's because English adopted many Latin words. However, there is an abundance of Latin derived words which have Germanic synonyms / counterparts. ..

[@adriszabo1665]

I think the same, I am a non-native Norwegian speaker and the sentence was quite easy to understand, except the feoh part. Butan is actually the Scnadinavian utan/uten, it's the same thing, they just added a b at the beginning. I don't think this is closer to German, England had an entire century with danes and norwegians in it in the middle ages.

[@marchauchler1622]

@JET Snr You are right. It is a great language in its modern and older version coming from England which has a rich history but where is the link here? What are you trying to say? The interesting fact about English is its abundance of words which is due to the impact of Latin (plus French) and Germanic lsnguages/ Dialects (Saxon, Frisian, Danish etc.). The fusion / influence of several languages (Germanic, Latin, Celtic) is one of the reasons why the English grammar had automatically been simplified for centuries as Merchants who spoke French, Saxon etc. had to communicate with each other. Thus English eventually became a comparibly simple language to study and (besides its geographic distribution due to Britain's history) to be used as global lingua franca....

[@brog5330]

Adri Szabó I mean yes but don’t forget the Anglo saxons they were from northern Germany.

[@matthewarnold6794]

@@marchauchler1622 English is a Germanic Language.

[@oidualclaudi0]

You need to get this guy to speak with a Frisian speaker or with German and Dutch speakers, it will be interesting

[@fab006]

Get a Swiss German speaker on there, too. I’ve noticed that the dialect sometimes helps with vocabulary.

[@alanguages]

A Frisian speaker is likely already trilingual with Dutch and English, if you are able to get someone from the Netherlands. It would be difficult to find a monolingual Frisian speaker. If it is a Frisian speakers in Germany, then they also would likely be trilingual with German, Frisian and English.

[@jockeberg4089]

Yes, seriously. I'm a Swedish speaking rune enthusiast who speaks English and "studied" German for a while. I understood almost everything, a lot thanks to german. Old norse and runes made me understand "feoh". The first rune in the younger futhark is "fe", and it means cattle. It was called "fehu" in the elder futhark. So in the anglo-frisian futhark? Feoh, of course! :)

[@MrThingstodotoday]

Icelandic would work peobably the best

[@Dziki_z_Lasu]

Norbert should pay more attention to Kashubian and Silesian conversations he did, even check Polish with old Germanic words preserved in a "Slavic refrigerator". Buten - sl. csb. outside, blumy - flowers, ratusz [rada-council + (h)us-house] - town hall etc.

[@akrinord]

It's just crazy to me that - judging from the comments - German speakers/Dutch people/Scandinavians seem to understand Old English better than native English speakers do.

[@felixroseweiss3066]

Although English is in the same language group as German and Scandinavian, for some reason they have become very different.

[@ludwigamadeus11]

@@felixroseweiss3066 Perhaps it is because of the influence exerted by Roman culture with the Latin language. As well as romance languages, especially French.

[@jameeztherandomguy5418]

Why is it crazy? Old English was just a different version of Ingvaeonic German, and was pretty close to Old High German that you could understand them about completely. Like the difference between English and Scots. Old English stayed the same until 1200, when the Old French people invaded. Their language was a TINY bit of Frankish (which was a Germanic one) and mostly Latin (which was not Germanic). But, since Germany didn't have much invasions, and Old High German was quickly evolving into Middle High German, the words couldn't be more different! I mean, only 29% of English words have an Old English cognate. 58% of the words are from Latin, so it is better regarded as a Romance language though in it's core it is Germanic which is why you could probably understand simple sentences in Old English better than late Latin.

[@bobafruti]

Jameez TheRandomGuy i always wondered why it was so easy to read French or Spanish but reading German makes no sense.

[@kekeke8988]

Modern English shouldn't even be considered a legit descendant of Old English. It's more like a dumbed down creole language ever since the Norman Conquest. @Wasoll It's hard to believe that's true. I'd expect to recognize much more Latin based vocabulary in German, if Latin words were that abundant, as I can in romance languages, but I cannot. As native English speaker, perusing any Romance text I find half the text is cognates immediately. But German may as well be moonspeak.

[@ferisadi2418]

As a Dutch person who fluently speaks Dutch, German and English, all three sentences where fairly easy to understand. Old English sounds like a combination of these three languages.

[@ketotodadze2482]

I am fluent in Norwegian, so I am surprised to see that there are many words from modern day Norwegian language in old English.

[@OP-1000]

@@ketotodadze2482 It’s your Viking ancestors. They brought a lot of words to English.

[@judyp.]

Yes and when I (German) learnt Dutch, I said that it's like a mixture of German and English! Now I think that old English is a mixture of German, Dutch and Scandinavian 😅

[@billder2655]

⁠@@judyp.hat’s certainly the case - old english was the language of the anglo-saxons after all (influenced by long periods of norse occupation); if you’re interested, listen to some middle english - the difference is v interesting, it’s a very odd language, spoken in a very strange accent 😂 it’s also pretty much intelligible to modern english speakers

[@judyp.]

@@billder2655 thank you 😊

[@barbdunn8886]

The older the English, the more similar to German

[@Steve-zc9ht]

FACTS

[@cfam2438]

It’s is baiscally German, to be correct Anglo-Saxon in fact the have of the englisch roayls are half German.

[@Puleczech]

Well, it's no surprise since English is a GERMANIC language.

[@jand.4737]

@@Puleczech well, despite being considered a germanic language, it's strongly latinised as remnant of roman occupation in ancieng times. Ironically, even german is strongly latinised while staying a germanic language. (I learned more german in latin class than in german class, I always had the feeling.) Saying that northern germanic languages like norwegian or swedish are truest to our common linguistic ancestors is a wild guess, though, because I know nothing aboug theif lknguistic history.

[@octoberschild3115]

Brilliant Observation that. Seriously, I thought the same thing!

[@kring2602]

In modern Dutch it reads: “Ik heb 26 vee buiten mijn huis” quite literally the same sentence. I understood it right away.

[@reginakniprode246]

Vieh in German

[@ArthurPPaiva]

now you feel how english evoluted a lot.

[@henner7371]

"ik hebb soss un twintig Veeh buten mien Huus" in low german how it is spoken in the Elber-Weser region. The same origin as the old english language and of course Dutch.

[@CrippleX89]

@@henner7371 oh wow, that's actually very close to my local Dutch dialect: "ik heb zes en twintig vee buut'n mien huus"

[@lyidspino7653]

@@CrippleX89 Gronings? :)

[@zenkerlifts3526]

I'm danish. For some reason I understand everything he is saying since I am a fluent English, German and Danish speaker. To me it just sounds like a mixture of those !

[@CrankCase08]

Notably, the Old English of this period was heavily influenced by the Normans, who were the recent descendants of Viking settlers. That could be a reason why you understand it easily.

[@samgyeopsal569]

@@CrankCase08 the old english here is from before the norman conquest. Besides, the normans spoke french not norse. It is true however that old english received notable influence from old norse as a result of contact with Norwegian and Danish settlers

[@egz3637]

@@CrankCase08 You got it mixed up. English is influenced by vikings first, then later, become heavily "Latinized"(definitely wrong wording) by the Normans under William the Bastard, which were French speakers.

[@jan_777]

@@egz3637 Definitely. And it's interesting that the Vikings also crossed the Atlantic way before "Great Britain" was born. They not only settled in Britain, but also in Iceland. I find it higlgt interesting, how people, and therefore cultures and languages moved, mixed and progressed into what we can see today. Would be interesting to see and hear what the world looks like in a hundred or a thousand years.

[@H.G.Halberd]

as german and english speaker (aus deutschland) i can understand most of it too

[@martinhiesboeck]

Its amazing how much context German adds. sindan - sind etc.

[@kleinfritzchen3226]

We Germans clearly excel here at guessing Old English sentences meanings, having great fun to know better than even native English speakers! :D

[@delilah4668]

It’s where the large chunk of Old English comes from, so-

[@jennys.8703]

yes, the British have a lot of old German blood in their veins, whether they like it or not 😜

[@JM_TheBassist]

thats because old english is basically still anglosaxon, wich is close to saxon. and well..we have especially in german dialects a lot of old words. even some that were already in germanic in use.

[@NICEFINENEWROBOT]

But the #2 was not too easy one!

[@NICEFINENEWROBOT]

@ Coventry and such likes...

[@tobiasleira]

As a Norwegian speaker with English skills this was actually surprisingly easy. I managed more or less all of them. Fascinating!

[@kotrynasiskauskaite4995]

I thought that these letters like þ and the other one reminded me of icelandic.

[@aidy6000]

@@kotrynasiskauskaite4995 English retained most of those extra letters until the arrival of the Printing press 😊👍

[@missa2855]

Same for Danish.

[@missa2855]

@@kotrynasiskauskaite4995 they have practically just gone and become normal roman letters. Like Þessum being related to the word "this" And also disse in modern danish. And ð is basically just soft d. So I guess Icelanders don't just gave to KNOW when a d should be hard soft or silent, since they can read it.

[@AllAboutChess1977]

Hehe, yeah, really easy for me (I am danish)!

[@jessicasturm5099]

I‘m from Austria and I understood 50-70% of everything. In our dialect (west of Austria, near the Swiss boarder) we still use words that are quite similar to old English, like Feer for cattle and hus is a house. So interesting to see all the similarities 😃

[@bengrint84]

That's very cool. As an English native learning German, bloman and sindan was obvious to me. It's all very interesting.

[@Matzo_]

It's like you put German and (modern) English words into a pot, cook it and then season it with some Swedish pronunciation

[@MV_96]

true lol

[@allaselboskar5767]

Indeed

[@J75Pootle]

Knowing how modern English formed, it's more like sticking English in a pot and removing most of the non-germanic influence

[@hinchlnt]

Some Swedish? LOL. Yes, it was due to those beastly Vikings coming ashore on English beaches, plundering, feasting and eventually enjoying the humble, helpless English peasant girls.

[@carollizc]

@@hinchlnt Actually, I read once that those "helpless" English girls actually *preferred* the Viking lads, since they were more invested in practicing personal hygiene, and weren't bad looking on the whole.

[@juanpascallucianobravado6112]

Someone over my shoulder asking why I watch something so “boring”. I could only think about how boring they were. I learn so much from these videos about languages and their origins. It’s endlessly fascinating and I feel a tiny bit more intelligent after each one.

[@But_WhatIf]

Some People are just simpleminded let them be, in most cases they don't change^^

[@renatanovato9460]

I have so much fun watching this. I play the game along. Love the comments. I really can't see someone saying it boring.

[@karenchiavazzo2091]

As a dutch and German speaker this was actually pretty easy to understand! You should do a video with Dutch/German speakers to see how much they understand

[@westend37]

karen thx. me too.

[@ju5t_0nl1ne7]

Yeah, I'm a Dutch speaker too and this is quite understandable. But i think that has to do with the fact that old english stems from old frysian.

[@WaltraudWichtel]

jeah, me too. I'm German

[@fabianniestegge4105]

Ja

[@OkaySoShit]

@@ju5t_0nl1ne7 Dutch Is rich?

[@TheReddkatt]

Wow. As a Yorkshireman from England and also a dutch speaker this was soooo easy !! The influences of Old English are very noticable in old Yorkshire dialect

[@inspectorseb5286]

I speak Swedish, English and German so this was easy to understand, it's like a mix of words from all those languages, really cool

[@annekabrimhall1059]

I speak English and German but I got it immediately. I dreamt that sweds could understand my German. Is that possible?

[@MrJakobMovies]

Same its really cool that i kindoff actually understand most of it

[@beeping2blipping]

@@annekabrimhall1059 It depends a lot of how you pronounce each word and your intonation for how good the one you talk with will be to decode your intention (meaning). Also a lot of Swedish people today haven't even had German as a second language at school, so they are more trained in English then any other language (from passive consumption of media) and that is also more or less the second language after Swedish in every school today. (German or any other language will be the third language they will have opportunity to learn.)

[@renatanovato9460]

You must feel the same I feel watching the ones with latin languages. In this episode it sounded like nothing i heard before. (I am na portuguese native, bybthe way)

[@annekabrimhall1059]

My son studies Latin and Japanese!

[@marvinh1091]

Generally: If you’re German you can nearly understand everything because the words are much more similar than those used in the present with Latin roots.

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

Because the roots of old English are Germanic. The roots of modern English are still Germanic. It's just that they replaced far too much with words of Latin root.

[@flimpeenflarmpoon1353]

@@maythesciencebewithyou damn you're telling me that English, a Germanic language, is Germanic? No way

[@kekeke8988]

@@flimpeenflarmpoon1353 Does it even still count as a Germanic language if 90% of the original Germanic vocabulary was replaced by Latin, French, and various words from random world languages?

[@phralvim]

English people was in process to adopt french as official language, but the process was interrupted. So english is a mix of germanic with french.

[@michaelmatisse2808]

english is based on old french rather than latin...william the conqueror was a native old french speaker (from Normandy) and imposed old french as the elite language of England but in the long run the English language became a creole of old germanic (mainly frisian) and old french.

[@cmillivol98]

Being a native English speaker didn’t help a bit on this one, but the semester of German I took in college and having a few Swedish friends I learned Swedish from helped a lot😂

[@SobrietyandSolace]

Same here, I remember that little bit of German I did at school when I was 15 and am sat here the whole time like 'this is just German lol'

[@renerpho]

@@SobrietyandSolace If you ever need an argument for why it is useful to learn even a little bit of a foreign language (even if you won't speak it later in life), here you have it. :-)

[@Jürgen_von_Schumacher]

Taking two years of German pretty much helped me understand all of it XD

[@rutherfrogp.wilmington4907]

Same with me and my Danish studies

[@hideouswh5718]

Heya, native West-Frisian speaker here. I understood every sentence 100%!

[@Thestuffdoer]

West Frisian is basically Old English with more Dutch influences if I’m right, so that makes sense!

[@famkedegraaf5135]

Im a Frisian so i actually understood about 90% of this! I love how frisian and english are so similar. for instance cheese is tsiis, roof is rûf, door is doar (all pronounced basically the same and mean the same thing)

[@MrRcn23]

If anything, the spelling for the words you used as an example makes more sense than the english one!

[@javicruz9754]

I heard Frisian is now declining as a language because some prefer talking Dutch, and I saw a comment from another Frisian speaking saying he didn't speak Frisian stating it's not suitable when talking to God or the rest of his neighbors Don't let it fall out of use and continue use it as much as possible a it is the closest related language to modern English

[@famkedegraaf5135]

@@javicruz9754 Sadly enough, it's true. In most small villages people still speak Frisian, and also in church, so I don't see why it would be difficult to talk to God in Frisian. Not a lot of elementary schools teach it anymore either. I hope we can keep speaking it for a long long time here!!

[@mileech2107]

I just found out Old English had it's roots from a variety of languages including old Frisan hence the similarities seen today. I missed most of the sentences as a native English speaker 🤣

[@thomasrosenthal1738]

@@MrRcn23 When I was in school I learned that "Good butter and good cheese are good English and good Fries".

[@falcone5287]

Seems like Old English is much closer to German rather than modern English

[@tarkhan1981]

Angles and Saxons are Germanic tribes, so they spoke practically the same language

[@Erics_Youtube_Handle]

The modern languages would probably be much closer even today if English hadn't been so heavily influenced by Old Norse and Norman French. It's interesting to me in this video that they keep wanting to relate to Romance languages like Spanish. That influence came later, but it's just second nature for us go think of French/Latin as a common source of English words.

[@troublewithweebles]

Those old connections are the foundation of english actually. We still retain similarities to Old Norse and proto german languages, too!! German is one more language in the long family that our english is indebted to!

[@brittakriep2938]

Old English can be called Anglo Saxon. There is still a german federation state ,Niedersachsen' and in the state ,Schleswig- Holstein' there is a region still today called Angeln, so the people of the ,Low German Region' are the descendants of those Anglo Saxons which not moved to England. For example the low german word for little is lütt, and the low german word for fork is Forke.

[@HernilLynn]

They said that German is the mother of English language. I am just not sure.

[@Kaiserland111]

As an American who has learned German, this was very interesting and not actually too difficult! If you just average the German and English in your brain you can usually come up with something that has the right idea, if not exactly the correct particulars.

[@rjbiii]

Agreed. I've only been studying German for 4 months now (and studying it very casually), it's easier to guess these.

[@erstenamefamiliename7988]

Same here! It was pretty cool. It also shows just how different Old English is from Modern and even Middle English.

[@clarissa1811]

yeah im a native english and german speaker and i was actually surprised at how well i could understand it! i read the thumbnail and it didn't even click to me that it was old english at first

[@Cuticho]

I made the mistake to try to think in Danish/English Mixture. Should have gone for German yeah :)

[@datpudding5338]

@bademeister I think the word your looking for to describe the relation between low and high german is called 'Idiom'

[@suzannedwight9272]

Learning Old English, I found having a northern British accent helped a lot. My Gran still used many of the words the panel struggled with

[@oisnowy5368]

As a Dutch speaker, I could outright read the sentence: "ic haebbe syx-ond-twentig feoh butan min hus" "ik heb zes-en-twintig vee buiten mijn huis" Some vowels get thrown about a bit. From haebbe to heb might look a bit of a jump, but the infinitive of "to have" in Dutch is "hebben".

[@telocho]

In dutch east dialect (formally nether-saxionian) it would be "ik heb zes en twingtig vee buut'n mien huus"

[@AneGaarden]

How do you count in Dutch; like in German & Danish, or like the other Germanic languages?

[@emdiar6588]

@@AneGaarden een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes zeven. acht, negen, tien. elf, twaalf, dertien viertien etc then twintig, eenentwintig, tweeëntwintig, drieëntwintig etc Then the same rules until 80, when a 'T' is added to the beginning of acht for some reason: Tachtig, eenentachtig, tweeëntachtig etc. My favourite sentence in Dutch is 'Achtentachtig prachtige grachten' (88 wonderful canals). It's how I mastered the 'g'/'ch' sound when I learned Dutch.

[@mlipinski3396]

The sentence in German: Ich habe sechs-und-zwanzig vieher außerhalb meines hauses

[@bpinkhof]

ik heb hetzelfde geschreven

[@MrMaselko]

My 6 years of struggling through German lessons are paying of. Finally.

[@laurenelden6694]

lol same

[@noxfury2281]

How did you study german for 6 years ? Are you fluent now?

[@真·亚述的荣耀]

buahahhahahahahh same feeling lmao

[@melanie-beltran]

Now I see how my german teacher said that English and German have the same roots. Looking at it.. its like German is closer to Old English

[@DarkTrevort]

@@melanie-beltran English (or its progenitor) is basically a Low German dialect from various areas around the North Sea. To this day Frisian, which is still spoken in the North Sea area of Germany and the Netherlands, is the closest language to English (not considering Scotts here).

[@sozinho1]

"Hale" meaning "healthy" is still used in the expression "hale and hearty".

[@JesusFriedChrist]

sozinho1 Is that a common expression where you live? It is not common at all in NW North America.

[@GdotWdot]

And the 'sound' in 'safe and sound' is a cognate of German 'gesund' and Dutch 'gezond' (healthy.)

[@VioletEnds]

@@JesusFriedChrist I hear it every once in a while here in the South. Mostly from older people

[@lumpenhund2772]

Or in an infamous chant: "Heil!"(ei=ai) At least that is what popped into my mind. In German, things can be hale(heil), aswell as men. Wishing it, consequently means that you do not wish for its dimise. I wonder why some fellow Germans do not point out this similarity...

[@Dicska]

@@GdotWdot Wow, thanks, I always wondered where that 'sound' came from. Do you think it may also have common roots with the latin 'sana/sano', or it's just a coincidence?

[@ljsilver733]

The „Flower Sentence“ is almost german. „Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier“.

[@MsChris2707]

Genau

[@H0llaZ1990]

If you speak English, German and a Scandinavian language, this shit is easy!

[@echinaceapurpurea1234]

Yes, as long as you follow your intuition and don't overthinking it is surprisingly easy! But it would be a pain to properly learn the grammar and vocabulary though :D

[@SuperRedtrout]

Agreed. As a Norwegian that knows english and some german, this makes me think i would manage communicating with an old-english speaking person

[@chiar0scur0]

I was surprised at how badly they did. I speak just english fluently, with terrible spoken spanish and a bit of German, and the second one in particular was like immediately obvious. Bathe your hands to stay hale (and hearty)

[@eosgaspar3598]

@@chiar0scur0 i would say it is absolutely not "immediately obvious" (and i speak Swedish, English and German) :D

[@ericforsyth]

Not ”fēoh”. That sounds exactly like får = sheep.

[@wakinyanokiye]

I speak Dutch/Flemish/German and I could read and understand everything. Some words are very similar or the same and they're still used in many dialects today in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany

[@michaelbollinger8060]

Because saxons originate from germany lol.

[@Fete_Fatale]

English & Spanish speaker here, but with friends in Flanders. In the first sentence I got "bῡten" straight away, as "binnen, buiten, boven, & beneden" (inside, outside, upstairs, & downstairs) were concepts drilled into me when hearing my friend telling her young child where his shoes, toys, or football was ... or that it was time to go to bed, upstairs. "fēoh" (cattle, "vee" in Dutch) however I confused with "foot" ... as in the pre-metric measure ("voet" in Dutch, at least as a body part)), and therefore read it as "my house is 26 ft long", since it's more practical to measure the outside dimension. Also, having a backyard full of cows isn't a concept that leapt out at me :)

[@IAmFat1968]

@Brand Bioc-har and Frisian, which is the mother of every germanic languages

[@bpinkhof]

@@IAmFat1968 interessant, is that echt, oud-fries dan of anglo-fries?

[@jenniferhuntley9769]

Sounds very much like my brilliant German friend trying to explain things in English. 😂 I always said he was speaking Deutchglish. 🥰 thank you for making this...I love it!

[@gregorbenediktmanfredliedt2034]

German and Dutch People, probably just laughing how you are always thinking into the wrong direction.

[@misterkami2]

Gregor benedikt Manfred Liedtke How did you mean in the wrong direction? (Actually easily had all 3 sentences (did need the “remain” info to see the second one). I speak Dutch, German, English and a bit of French and Portuguese, but the Dutch is definitely what made the connection)

[@RenzoVV98]

@@misterkami2 Lol I had the same experience, even speak the same languages as you.

[@gregorbenediktmanfredliedt2034]

@@misterkami2 People who neither speak German nor Dutch (nor Frisian nor Scandinavic Languages) aren't qualified enough to understand many words of old English, so they think something else about words which are just easy for us

[@misterkami2]

@@gregorbenediktmanfredliedt2034 Ah.. I thought you meant German and Dutch were the ones thinking in the wrong direction.. what you meant was us laughing about how others think in the wrong direction. Thank you for the clarification.

[@misterkami2]

@@RenzoVV98 Wow, that is cool! It's a quite unusual combination of languages. I would love to learn something completely different such as Japanese. I assume you are Dutch?

[@tokiarven]

When I stopped trying to hear English, and instead looked for the German, it got a lot easier to understand! Very fascinating :)

[@BeckyMesser]

Agreed, I’m definitely relying more on my German-speaking portion of my brain than my native English-speaking portion haha

[@rb98769]

I’ve studied just a little bit of German, but the similarities are very easy to spot.

[@spir1tcs]

As a german speaker I immediately understood the third sentence

[@pt3085]

Another Keyboard Cat me too

[@TheMichaelK]

If you‘d speak some modern Saxon (Low Saxon / Low German), you‘d understand even more. E.g. first sentence in Low Saxon: Ik hev/hebbe sös-un-twintig vey buten myn huus.

[@unnamedchannel2202]

@@TheMichaelKjau datt hebb wi us glikks tosoomriemelt.

[@Cornu341]

@@TheMichaelK feoh -> vey -> vieh for german speakers, which is the word for cattle.

[@EpreTroll]

Some of it sounds very similar to Dutch making it not so hard to understand at least when reading

[@rotciv003]

butan en buiten, bloman en bloemen, belifan en blijven.

[@nielsberkers]

indeed can be easily read as 'Ik heb vijf-en-twintig vee buiten mijn huis'

[@cedricvanderleelie]

Zeker bij de laatste

[@coffic]

I'm a Frenchwoman who can speak English, some German, and useless smatterings of a dozen other languages, including Latin, middle English and middle French. In the Netherlands? No need for a dictionary! When you want to be understood in return though...

[@cedricvanderleelie]

@@coffic Well the Netherlands is the best English speaking country worldwide, besides countries with English as their native language, so you should be fine being understood in the Netherlands while speaking English

[@rogbard]

I gave these sentences to my mother who is from the north west of Germany and doesn´t speak a word of English. She got the first and third sentence right without even thinking about it, altough she thought it was female deer instead of cattle in the first sentence. The second sentence was a bit harder. She understood "do something to your hands to live healthy".

[@Ecolinguist]

Wow! That's so awesome! Say hello to your mum! :)

[@Kammreiter]

Diese Frauen 🤔 können sowieso schon (fast) alles 😄

[@FalkFlak]

Even it was propably stated here before a few hundred times: In german it's called Vieh (Cattle) and numbers as "sechsundzwanig" (six and twenty) until today.

[@starkraven7308]

I'm no linguist. I do, however, spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about American English words and where they came from, as in "Which language did they originate from?" and "How much have we changed them and why?". This is all pretty fascinating stuff.

[@dinaenme-berger7076]

Yes, me too. It is part of the fundamental questions - where do we come from? Where is our origin and where are we likely to go?

[@Κυαδρών]

I agree, r/etymology helps too

[@PurpleCastles]

Same! It's so interesting! In fact, because I'm learning German and Norwegian, although there are many similarities between German, Norwegian and English, as I'm learning new words or phrases I always question how people figured out how to translate languages. Like, I mean, who kept track of how languages changed, where did certain words come from, and why did they change or even how did some of the same words get different translations (like how the word "Gift", for example, means a present or something someone gives another person, in English, but means "poison" in both German and Norwegian...)

[@isaac4273]

@@PurpleCastles it is indeed a fascinating topic. My mother tongue is Spanish, and I've been studying Portuguese for a little while now, and it is really interesting to see how much they can differ once you go deeper, even though they were the same language at some point

[@PurpleCastles]

@@isaac4273 First of all, your English is super good. Nice job! Second, yeah it definitely is interesting. I bet it's especially interesting with Spanish and Portuguese because those 2 languages seem to be very similar to each other. The question is, though, why are there differences?

[@williamsmith455]

Speaking German certainly helps with this. "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." (don't I wish)

[@franzelias5368]

Old English was a germanic language for sure. Also I'm thinking feoh = Vie(c)h (modern German dialect for Tier/animal)

[@3st3st77]

Yeah, same with "Badet eure Hände" (Bathe your hands).

[@charlesrockafellor4200]

Ja. The first two I had a word or two, but "Hit's Sumer. Se Bloman sindan her."? I laughed when I saw it! :-D

[@ItsARandomDragon]

For Fēoh i thought of the rune Fehu, but i thought that meant "Wealth", but it seems it can be "cattle" too

[@micayahritchie7158]

I know English natively, I've been learning Swedish for a year now and it's funny because I'm certain a year ago I wouldn't understand these sentences but it isn't actually that bad now

[@madgeordie4469]

The American guy actually hit the nail on the head when he said that he always thought that the Southern US accent sounded closer to that of the original British settlers. Linguists have been aware for many years that a minor vowel shift occurred in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. Most of the British colonists in America arrived there before this happened and so took their pre shift accent and pronunciation with them. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were colonised by British settlers after the shift happened so their modern accents reflect this. That is why the American accent sounds so different to those of everywhere else. Weird (the circumstances, not the accent)..

[@katelpo]

This is so interesting! Thanks for sharing in a nutshell :)

[@kadmow]

Mad Geordie: however, despite the late timing NZ seems to have received a different demographic (More Scotts??) to Aust, hence they have avoided suffering the great vowel switch which all Australians betray themselves with. Apparently. (I am Australian - we mock NZ'ers E and I, though historically we are probably more incorrect (If that is any way to look at language)

[@madgeordie4469]

@@kadmow The majority of the early settlers of New Zealand were English but there was a large number of Scots and Irish and their accents and intonation have influenced how English is spoken in New Zealand to this day. As you say the Lesser Vowel Shift at the end of the eighteenth century did not reach Scotland or Ireland so they continued with the older type of pronunciation which is reflected in the modern New Zealand accent.

[@williamjordan5554]

Well, there is a type of Southern accent which is not rhotic.

[@madgeordie4469]

@@williamjordan5554 .....and that is?

[@CrimsonFall2009]

Last one took me about 2 seconds. “It’s summer. The flowers are here.” I love it.

[@luancardoso3060]

CAN ITALIAN, PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH SPEAKERS UNDERSTAND LATIN ? 👍 IF YOU WANNA SEE THIS VIDEO

[@SamuelMK_]

That would be interesting to see as well. It's pretty much the Romance language equivalent of this video.

[@IlGab02]

Sarebbe fantastico

[@kijul468]

Yes. Classical Latin as well so it's just that more difficult for the Italian speaker hehe.

[@IlGab02]

@@sonicps9056 eh sì

[@moisesgomes6191]

europeans are at an advantage because usually they take latin lessons in school. So maybe PT-Potuguese, Spanish (non latin americans) speakers can understand this language better.

[@alldamnnamesaretaken]

As a native Dutch speaker I understand I have 26 outside my house but didn't know feoh, until you said cattle I was like: oh, Vee

[@chrys8048]

it literally sounded like 4 but in a french accent lol

[@esther2376]

Appeltje eitje dit!

[@CraftedFTW]

SAME

[@greencupcakes1]

I thought deer for some reason, like my brain turned it into the word “fallow” which incidentally were also used as money hence the American Bucks

[@johaquila]

Exactly the same happened for me as a native German speaker. (German for feoh/cattle/vee is Vieh or colloquially Viech). I think my problem was the spelling difference, which was just big enough for my knowledge of English to get in the way. (English getting in the way is incidentally also what happened when I learned Dutch using Duolingo. It actually made Dutch word order kind of difficult for me, because I had to consciously remember the weird German word order in order to get the identical Dutch one.)

[@lohovi6571]

love it 🙏🏼❤️ "fēoh" is like "vieh" = cattle (but pejorative) in german syx ond twentig = sechsundzwanzig [six and twenty] (26) norbert it's just sick how much effort you put into those videos, especially with those transcriptions.. this must be so much work! but it pays off! 💪🏼💪🏼

[@lohovi6571]

@@servantofaeie1569 idontknowwhybutitsreallyweird.numbersingermanarespecial

[@fab006]

German doesn’t put spaces in compound words.

[@hannekehartkoorn5987]

Vieh ist not pejorative. It simply means livestock. Like in the TV-series 'Der Doktor und das liebe Vieh'.

[@Ana_Al-Akbar]

"Vieh" is not always pejorativ. German farmers use this word it also for their animals.

[@lars-akesvensk9704]

In Swedish "feoh" is "fä" which is the same as "Vieh" in German. So a house where you keep the animals is "fähus". Hus is the same spelling in Swedish as in Old English then.

[@webpig711]

Me (from Northern Germany): Why is he speaking German?

[@ilovebmth2007]

Ich komme aus Bremen 🙈

[@sayven]

Thought for a second when I read the thumbnail that it was a German video

[@webpig711]

@@gravy-jones Yes, we still have a district here in Schleswig-Holstein called "Angeln". ... and there are three Bundesländer with "Sachsen" (Saxony) in their name.

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

I mean, I'm German too, but I wasn't able to understand everything without the explanation. But then it all made sense. So it's not the same, it's just quite similar. It's much easier if you know some Northern German dialects or Old Frisian language, I guess. Like "buten" is a thing in Low Saxon/Low German. And I did not recognize the similarity of "feoh" and "vieh" , because the spelling is so different and die pronunciation sounded kina weird.

[@Blackleopardavrilkim]

@@ilovebmth2007 ich auch

[@ruigebeer]

As a Dutch this wasn't too hard. It definitely helps seeing it written and hear it spoken. Especially if you have some knowledge about Dutch spoken by our grandparents (sindan = zijnde = being). Very cool!

[@holliswilliams8426]

*as a Dutchman or as a Dutch person

[@germanderbelga]

Helemaal akkord

[@knastvogel]

Yep, Feoh = cattle = vee (Dutch)

[@renskedj]

Ik heb zesentwintig vee buiten mijn huis.

[@thedutchcooker3892]

@@knastvogel vond het niet heel erg op elkaar lijken

[@jort93z]

This is suprisingly close to german. As a german, who doesn't know any dutch, i'd have guessed that language was dutch if I didn't know.

[@Hifi_RoosterMan]

It's incredibly close to Danish, they even say the numbers the same way

[@NeoMicy]

@@DarthNihilusKorriban Yo Nihlus i thougth I killed you !

[@robindemeyer8960]

@@Hifi_RoosterMan that's also how you say it in German and Dutch

[@robindemeyer8960]

Dutch alfabet is the exact same as English so no Eszet or a and e in one letter, also there are some, but very few accents on the letters

[@archados]

As a Dutch speaker, I can tell you that its verrrryyy similar to Dutch. Almost identical. For example the Dutch equivalent to the first sentence would be "Ik heb zes en twintig vee buiten mijn huis".

[@gulyaszalan2313]

It's so great to hear when the polish guy mentions the hungarian language, not in a single time. Greetings from Hungary, God bless all of our polish brothers!😊🇵🇱🇭🇺

[@turmuthoer]

3:36 - This way of saying numbers actually still exists in some modern English dialects. My gran, born and bred in rural Wiltshire, will say the time as _'five and twenty to six'_ for example.

[@fab006]

German really helps with Old English. Fēoh is Vieh, ēowre is eure, hāl is heil (a slightly archaic word for healthy), blōman is Blumen, sindan is sind. (I didn’t get “belīfan”, but once he said it means remain, it made sense to me.)

[@margaritaheine9542]

👍👍👍👍👍

[@adioqier]

I'm also German. Got the first part of sentence 2 immediately (Badet eure Hände), then quickly worked out belifan = bleiben. Couldn't work out what hal means in isolation but from the context it was clear that it's probably healthy.

[@margaritaheine9542]

@@adioqier "hāl" wie "heil". Aber ich habe das selber nur nach der englischen Übersetzung erkannt)) healthy

[@keighlancoe5933]

@@adioqier to use a controversial comparison: Old English 'siġe hāl' German 'sieg...' never mind haha. Hāl could also be used as a kind of greeting and goodbye as well

[@adioqier]

@@TheMikeOrganist My first idea was actually something along the lines of "give life to" because lif = life and the prefix be- in German and English (mainly in archaic words) often means "upon sth"

[@andryuu_2000]

It's literally a Northern German getting confused when speaking English

[@JoaoVictor-nl5gp]

Lol

[@brunohill3229]

Or in my case, an Australian the speaks really bad German, I have it nailed.

[@maaax1173]

It’s just a mix of dutch, german and a scandinavian language

[@rogerwilco2]

Basically Dutch or Frisian.

[@Adis1]

@@rogerwilco2 I live in the east of The Netherlands, and beside standard Dutch, i am also very proficient at local languages, meaning Nedersaksisch, i understood like 85% of this.

[@murkotron]

"eowre handa" is clearly modern German "eure Hände" =))

[@joi9480]

icelandic: yðar hendur

[@pt3085]

murkotron I think it's very close to "our hands" too.

[@murkotron]

@@pt3085 "your", not "our"

[@letozabalmaty]

@@pt3085 our hands in old English - ure handa.

[@erwee7329]

Jouw handen = dutch

[@joannathesinger770]

Singing a little German song I learned in elementary school in my head "Alle Vogel sind schön da...", sinden is from the same verb. Flowers...birds...same thing as the last sentence.

[@Sven_Goris]

I'm from Belgium and I speak Flemisch and German. This is easy to understand for me, only some words are different but the syntax is the same. I can clearly see the similarities between these languages. Very interesting and fascinating!

[@mayou7381]

OH REALLY???

[@RM668]

I understand almost everything as a dutch speaker

[@EagleOneM1953]

I'm originally from Belgium having lived in the US for the past 26 years and I speak Dutch and German too.....and Enmglidh of course so this was most interesting and I was able to guess quite a bit...

[@ltmcolen]

I work in West-Flanders and I can assure you if you can translate their dialect you can understand this :)

[@willypeeters6136]

@@ltmcolen I remember I once had to make a delivery of a create of tools in the Ieper area and asked an old man sitting on a bench for directions to the store.... I might ass well have asked the cat sitting next to him because I couldn't understand one word of what he said...none... This was in the 70s long before the computer was even invented, let alone the GSM. A map was all I had and even that one turned out to be outdated and useless... I think West Flanders have the worst dialect in the country.... ...

[@kishinasura5347]

So is Feoh like "Vieh" in German maybe?

[@c.norbertneumann4986]

Modern English: cattle

[@Chili_667]

Yeah it's like Vieh or Viech but that butan threw me off.

[@TiberentenTV]

@@Chili_667 "Butan" kennt man aus dem Niederdeutschen: "Buten un binnen wagen un winnen" ist der Wahlspruch Bremens: "Draußen und drinnen wagen und gewinnen".

[@leod-sigefast]

Yes, I believe it is. Feoh is a funny one in English. It was lost from Old English and then reborrowed back into English, becoming Fee (money) via Norman-French, which of course was a Romance language but with a sizeable Germanic chunk of words.

[@heimatliebe116]

Yes!

[@BigIZeezy]

so Germans pronouncing ''the'' like ''Se'' is actually kinda the right way

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

Best comment!!!!!

[@stephankiener6640]

Muahahaha! Thumbs up!

[@HesseJamez]

No, sis is just se correct German accent -:) We use to struggle with the "th"-noise, since we don't have.

[@NICEFINENEWROBOT]

@@HesseJamez Exthept when you thuffer from a thpethial pronounthing dithability that affecth your tongue. Then it'th all eathy.

[@unicornisis2820]

@@NICEFINENEWROBOT Thank you for traveling with the deutsche Bahn!

[@warpedweft9004]

As an Australian speaker who learned German at school, yes it's very easy to understand. Surprisingly I can understand a lot of written Dutch, and even some Norwegian, although I struggle when it's spoken. But then I taught English to Speakers of other Languages and can pretty much work out a lot from a combination of body language and sounds.

[@TheeEnglishKnight]

‘australian speaker?’ lmao, australian isn’t a language

[@eZ6Pain]

@@TheeEnglishKnight In linguistic topics it matters which dialact you speak bro

[@handeruiter7595]

Could you teach my grandson some Dutch? I would be much obliged. He is 9 years old, growing up near Melbourne, is regularly in the Netherlands (except for the recent corona years), but is not picking up many Dutch words. Except for calling me "opa' and pronunciating "train' as the Dutch "trein'. His mother, my daughter, is Dutch, but since many years 'abroad', my son in law is as Australian as can be, including his accent and his old mother still managing an enormous sheep farm.

[@celem1000]

I had similar experiences. I have native English with a little schoolboy German and always found reading Dutch to be vaguely possible. I then went and learned fluent Swedish, which probably improved my Dutch comprehension even more. Latin is huge too. Even if you never formally.studied it, just the habit of seeking roots in modern languages will lead you to discover related words in others.

[@AchkeineAhnung24]

I‘m from southern germany and old english looks and sounds far more familiar to me than modern english. I understood about 90% of the words. I think if you would show these sentences to someone from northern germany, or the Netherlands they would understand everything.

[@Anonymous-sb9rr]

I'm Dutch, I got the last sentence immediately, but the first two I only understood partially. It definitely helped to be familiar with German. Heabbe sounds more like habe than heb, eowre sound like irhe than je or uw and sinden sounds more like sind than zijn.

[@Jljujubeats]

I'm Dutch and I could understand 90% of the sentences. It's honestly fascinating, especially if you're also at least a little familiar with German.

[@lea..a-w6u]

Northern german here - easy game. It’s very close to a special German my grandparents speak.

[@leung9401]

The third one was the easiest for German speakers: "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." Pretty sure it's very close in Dutch, too.

[@decentdark4465]

It was indeed very close to Dutch too

[@ikendusnietjij2]

I've been finding all of these closer to Dutch than German. I'm Dutch and a (German) friend of mine, who studied old German, said that in his experience Dutch is more like old German than new German is. So it makes sense I guess. I'd be fascinated how this works with Frisian, as it's the closest extant language to English.

[@Dragonblaster1]

I believe the Dutch for "I resign" (as in chess) is something like "Ik gif het opp" (I give it up). There are a lot of similarities between the two languages. On the first occasion I went to Holland, I was embarrassed at not knowing any Dutch at all (I was used to working in France, Germany and Spain, where I knew the languages well). However, I don't think I met a single Dutch person who couldn't speak English. I remember a porter at Schiphol Airport who gave me directions to the hire car area with his "just a little" English. I expressed my admiration for his facility with my native language, and he just shrugged and said, "Who speaks Dutch?"

[@Zesserie]

As a native swedish person that picked up some dutch during my younger years and fluent in english ofc. I was suprised of you well i could understand it.

[@kokofan50]

@@ikendusnietjij2 I like to call Dutch the middle sibling because it end up between the extremes of its siblings, so it sounds a lot like both while being neither.

[@sachawithfield1151]

I am a native Dutch speaker (and we get taught German in school), and the third sentence was actually quite easy for me. I find it so cool how so many languages are sometimes just mix-matches from each other

[@lizmerrick6883]

Yes I got it because of my German classes. When I hear old English it sounds so much like a mixture of Welsh and Dutch to me!

[@Pinefenario]

De eerste zin was ook niet zo lastig. ‘ Ik heb zesentwintig ‘….’ buiten mijn huis’ wist ik er wel uit te halen. Alleen het woord feoh voor vee wist ik niet te ontcijferen. 🙂

[@NietzzTube]

@@Pinefenario same! (fellow dutchie)

[@mikeabba1990]

@sacha Withfield How similar are Dutch and Afrikaans?! The main difference is spelling so I'm told, when spoken they are very similar?!

[@Jurianpaulussen]

@@mikeabba1990 Afrikaans en Nederlands lyk baie na mekaar. Dis net 'n bietjie anders as Hollands Afrikaans en Nederlands lijken erg op elkaar. Het is een klein beetje anders dan Nederlands Afrikaans and Dutch are very similar to each other. It is just a bit different from Dutch

[@DaveJansenTPV]

As a Dutch speaker i fully got the first and last one and it blew my freaking mind.

[@jeroent5079]

As a native Dutch speaker, I understood the first and third sentence perfectly (about 60% of the second sentence). Interesting to see how old English and Dutch are so similar. Never knew that ‘fee’ (money) and our ‘vee’ (cattle) are related.

[@florianl8273]

Your comment made me realize we do have it in German too (Vieh, pronounced exactly the same)

[@sturlajonsson8992]

We have fjár in icelandic, whixh is sheep

[@NaudizAshildr]

I think the meaning came from cattle being used in trade

[@jegali]

Have a look at the old runic alphabet futhark. The first rune is "fehu" which means wealth or cattle.

[@kaanjel]

When he pronounced the word fēoh, is sounded a bit like 'veug'. In Limburgs we say veugel = vogels (birds). So I actually thought it was "I have twenty-six birds outside my house".

[@quintenc.3433]

Me, a dutch speaking person, basically acing this test. feels good man

[@stevehaase9023]

I aced it also as an American who speaks not only English, but Low German and German. Knowing Low German (East Frisian dialect) made it very easy.

Me too.....I am Maori, adopted by dutch parents as a wee baby. Yes the government stole us. I know dutch naturally. I love language.

[@litchtheshinigami8936]

Rere Huia Luckman same i love learning languages too

[@kevintanumihardja3881]

LOL Indeed... I'm still learning Dutch, but I can somehow understand most of those sentences. By listening, tho.. since the writing is a bit confusing.

[@kwj_nekko_6320]

@@stevehaase9023 Low German is perhaps the closest relative to English second to Scots and Frisian languages. Old Dutch (Old Low Franconian) is identified with the Istvaeonic tribes, Old High German is identified with Irminonic tribes, but Anglo-Frisian (common ancestor of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Old Frisian) and Old Low German (Old Saxon) are identified with Ingvaeonic tribes. Because neighboring Germanic tribes and languages were still in contact and able to affect each other, strict 'reverse-pedigree model' (like, "once Ingvaeonic, then never will be like Irminonic") should not be applied, but at least before the collapse of West Roman Empire, Old Frisian (and thus Anglo-Saxon or Old English) and Old Saxon were in the same dialect group.

Feoh- - German: “ Vieh” (cattle), pronounced as engl. fee! So English took the money meaning and German took the cattle meaning from the same original word! How interesting, I had never put those two together..

[@adhdsork]

In Swedish there is "fä" which also means cattle.

[@hansmanschot8091]

@@adhdsork in Dutch it is "vee"

[@seanadler918]

Then there's the Rune, Feoh or Fehu which means cattle and represented wealth. I know this well and yet I didn't make the connection.

[@andyarken7906]

I had, put I thought it was pure coincidence :-D Even though I know that Latin uses cattle for money, too.

[@davidk5954]

I thought about cows but I did not know why, then I remember the old norse saying "cattle dies" which includes the word "fer" or something like that.

[@teapoweredyugi]

For the 2nd example sentence, "hāl" being related to "whole" is not the whole picture. If you think about the word "Hale" as in "Hale and healthy", you get much closer.

[@preko1969]

The German dialects "Rhinelandic" or "Plattdeutsch" uses the word "Buten" for the regular english word "outside". Dutch people use the word "Buiten". It is related to the word "Bῡtan". In the dialect "Plattdeutsch" the words "Veih" or "Foe" (and many more different types of writing) are used for "cattle" depending of the region in Germany where the dialect is spoken. With "Rhinelandic" or "Plattdeutsch" it is absolutely no problem to understand the first phrase you presented. Even in regular german Language the phrase would be written like this: "Ich habe sechsundzwanzig Viecher vor dem Haus". When you split the word "sechsundzwanzig" like "sechs und zwanzig" you will see the similarity.

[@PatrickKursawe]

There's also "Färse" for a young cow that didn't give birth yet.

[@volvo480]

@@PatrickKursawe in Dutch: vaars (singular) or vaarzen (plural)

[@volvo480]

Dutch Lower Saxon dialect (near the German border) say "büüten" and "hüüs" like in Platt. People from either side of the Dutch/German border have mutually intelligible dialects.

[@XaeeD]

It's really more like my southern Dutch language than anything else. I commented on it. I pronounce those sentences almost exactly the same. I had no problem reading them.

[@XaeeD]

@@volvo480 Exactly.

[@connynaumann5139]

As a German, living 20 years in Ireland and knowing Dutch and Norwegian, it's so easy to understand. Amazing, I had no idea. :-)

[@Ross-vb8bb]

How long did it take for you to learn each of those languages (if you don’t mind) ?

[@ChrischLBaby]

@@Ross-vb8bb I'm a (northern) German and I lived in the Netherlands and now in Norway and both languages were pretty easy to learn. For me, coming from northern Germany we have a dialect there (plattdütsch) which made it maybe even easier.. But I know a lot of Germans here in Norway who struggle with learning Norwegian since the pronunciation of especially the vowels is entirely different.

[@Ross-vb8bb]

@@ChrischLBaby Oh, you have lived in Norway and Netherlands! That's nice! Well, you said it was easy to learn the languages, but... how long did it take for you to go from very beginner to fluent? And did you take lessons? Study at home? Or did you just learn on the streets? Anyways, thank you for sharing some of your experience with me. I appreciate it

[@connynaumann5139]

@@Ross-vb8bb ChrischLBaby sums it up quite nicely there. Dutch is very easy for us to read and learn. I shared a place in Australia with a Dutch girl, so picked up a lot. Norwegian was a bit harder for me but since my partner is Norwegian, it as well was learning by doing. English well, over the years, I became very fluent in. I think in English by now and have hard times remembering German words when talking to my mum on the phone. I actually started reading books in German again, just to freshen it up again.

[@schneeweichenmunster8416]

I can speak Lower Saxon fluently and could understood everything! It did not seem like an different language to me! This is amazing.

[@simonevanmuiswinkel9464]

True, it's most close to Frisian and to the Saxxon dialects, I think. (Grew up with low Saxxon as well, in Eastern Holland)

[@dutchafrikaner1204]

@@simonevanmuiswinkel9464 Beste Simone, Nedersaksisch is wordt niet gesproken in Holland maar in Oost-Nederland.

[@morganking3004]

That's because the two largest tribal groups in the Anglo Saxon confederacy were the Angles from Denmark and Saxons from northern coastal Germany. You understand Saxon because you ARE a Saxon!

[@danielmeier8321]

Im a german native speaker and its actually fascinating that old english is so closely related to modern german. We germans count still the same way like in the first example, saying „sechsundzwanig“, which means literally „six and twenty“, instead of twenty six. The same goes for the third example: „We are“ means in german „Wir sind“. Extremely close to old english. Flowers means Blumen in german too.

[@TheMichaelK]

If one speaks Low Saxon (Low German) things get even more similar. For example: Ic hæbbe syx ond twintig fēoh būtan mīn hūs LS in different spellings/dialects: Ik hev/hebbe sös-un-twintig vey buten myn huus (Northern Low Saxon/Eastphalian, New Saxon spelling) Ik heff söss-un-twintig Veeh buten mien Huus (Northern Low Saxon, SASS spelling)

[@TheYear2525]

I'm german, I don't understand old german but old english is like modern german to me xD .

[@Halicos93]

Wel English is derived from German .

[@connyhartl1362]

die King James Bibel geht sogar mit altem Bairisch besser als mit Englisch

[@WessauR]

Lmao

[@JudgeJulieLit]

​@@Halicos93 Old English (Anglo Saxon) derived from the same older Germanic language stock as Old German, but Modern English is not a child of Modern German, but a cousin who over centuries intermarried other languages, mostly Norman French, Latin and Greek, and imported words from Dutch and Scandinavian and other Romance languages like Spanish and Italian.

[@alexpond648]

Yes, but it sounds a bit off. Badet eure Hände zu bleiben heil. Grammar is def. English in this example. Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier. Grammar is German. Dialects would be even closer. S'is Sommer, de Blume sin her.

[@TheNotoriousDUDE]

"Feoh" is also related to the German "Vieh", which can describe any agricultural animal but is mostly used for cattle :)

[@eduplessis9482]

And "fe" in Norwegian

[@Tinky1rs]

@@Bugfriek Vee in Dutch, ik heb zesentwintig (stuks) vee buiten mijn huis. You cannot say twenty cattle, you'd have to add a counter like pieces (stuks).

[@NITROIRL40420]

Also, just sounding that "Vieh" out in my head reminded of Veal, so I guess that makes sense with what you're talking about.

[@schiffelers3944]

Or just simple the Elder rune feoh/fehu/F= life-stock, cattle... Dutch by the way, but that already had an entering.

[@iaesel1388]

In German you say: Ich habe sechsundzwanzig Viecher (but in common you would say "Rinder" for cattle) neben (or "bei" or "außerhalb") meinem Haus.

[@FebbieG]

Getting thrown back in time and having to figure out the language in order to survive would be a fascinating movie premise.

[@rishinz]

I love this. Starts like a sci-fi and turns into just two hours of complete failure to communicate and nothing gets accomplished.

[@21stcenturykelt]

This was a plot point in Timeline, based on the book by Michael Crichton

[@FebbieG]

@@21stcenturykelt Well, now I know what to add to the top of my to-be-read pile. Thanks!

[@williamjordan5554]

@@FebbieG Anything by Crichton is good. Jurassic Park of course.

[@simonl.6338]

If you're fluent in (modern)english and (modern)german the third one is very easy, I mean it's so close you understand it directly. The others are more difficult but it works.

[@elleeff3710]

It's crazy! As a German (with skills in Norwegian) I understood almost everything. Not every word, but oftentimes and I always understood the meaning of the sentences. For the second example ("bedad eowre handa") I also recognized that it must have originated from "Badet eure Hände" instead of "Wascht eure Hände". So "wascht" (en: wash) is the word we would use nowadays and "badet" (en: bathe) sounds older. So that totally makes sense. So interesting, thanks very much!! 😊

[@ddc2957]

I’m a native English speaker (Australia) & I could not make heads or tails of this. It’s massively removed from contemporary English.

[@spingebill8551]

A native German speaker can probably understand old English better than a native modern English speaker. Although modern English is technically Germanic, I believe most words are actually Romance language derived.

[@RacistFemboyFox]

@@spingebill8551 A lot of the words in English come from Latin, but it's not as many as you'd think. For a Romance language, it's actually pretty far removed from Latin in comparison to the other ones (excepting French; you might see a pattern here). English has a lot of Germanic origins too, but modern English actually derives something like 50% its words from French. I believe the reason French, and consequently English, are so far removed from the other romance languages is that French was meant to be spoken by the aristocracy, so was markedly different than the other languages in the area at the time.

[@sherryd.3425]

English, German, and Mama-speak to infants are similar when shared backgrounds exist. I am not quite tone-deaf, but my father was a musician, poet, and physics master. I could not ever reproduce what I heard, but I could easily visualize the patterns of his art. I saw webs of patterns and colors that linked me to his world. A visual text is my medium and I am almost able to capture the thoughts of the Autistic. I am not entirely comfortable with verbal discourse. I cringe. I am able to establish meaning and context with people at times when others are unable. I don't know why.

[@FrozenMermaid666]

Re the first sentence, I got everything right, except for the word for cattle - knowing Dutch made it so easy, because in Dutch the word for outside is buiten... And, now that I remember, there is this term vee in modern English that is cattle-related, so it makes sense, but feoh is still a bit different, so I couldn’t guess it...

[@joergmaass]

"Buten min Huus" in northern German dialect is "outside of my house". So I understood the "butan min hus" part, but "feoh" threw me off.

[@WereDictionary]

als er das aufgelöst hat, habe ich direkt an vieh gedacht. passt das auch zu platt?

[@hansmuller4338]

@@WereDictionary Habe mit meinem Mix aus westfälisch und rheinisch Platt auch an Vieh gedacht aber es wieder verworfen, weil ich das "butan" nicht einordnen konnte. Aber jetzt wo du es sagst, fiel mir die Sendung "buten und binnen" wieder ein :)

[@ianbrass9251]

Es kommt wirklich von Vieh oder eher vom Plural "die Viecher". Das h in feoh wird auch ähnlich dem "ch" ausgesprochen.

[@desmorgens3120]

Nederduytsch = "Buyten myn Huys" Niederländisch = "Buiten mijn huis"

[@EncausticBliss]

As a learner of German "foeh" reminded me of the less frequently used word "das Vieh" which also means cattle, although I hear "Das Rind" most often. :)

[@borgalabop]

I don’t know why KZbin recommended this to me, but it was very interesting to see how similar old English sounds to modern English

[@chriskelvin248]

On the second sentence, hal (with the line over the a) is exactly how "hale" is written in the phonetic. And the same meaning.

[@Luboman411]

The first sentence is very German. "Ich habe" and "Ic haebbe" sound practically the same--"I have." And the way you say numbers in German is precisely like that "six and twenty" or "sechs und zwanzig" instead of the English "twenty-six." English truly is a Germanic language! :O

[@kontiusjenkins5412]

@@javyroo9405 *the current english language is of course a germanic language too

[@anielad8721]

Dutch: ik heb- ic haebbe, zes en twintig, buiten- būten

[@entiendemierda3849]

The one about the flowers was almost German too, I immediately thought something along the lines of "Die Blumen sind hier"

[@Junkerjoerg1517]

The word order of numbers in English obviously changed not too long ago: I remember novels from the 19th century (Anthony Trollope for sure, but I think you can read it in this order in a Dickens novel as well), where they used this "six and twenty" way, also. Not surprinsingly, as a German (even from a - linguistically speaking - "high-German" region) I had not too hard a time to understand these old-English sentences. But I learned, that "Vieh" (cattle) and "fee" are not only pronounced totally the same, but also have the same origin. Makes sense, as cattle was used as money in the past, but I didn't get that until now. Nice!

[@ptsd73]

The first one was like a mix between Swedish language and Danish numbers. It is so similar to German and English.

[@LETMino85]

I'm native German and I am surprised how well I understood Old English. My guess with "feoh" was the the German word "Vieh" (literally pronounced like "fee") and it also means cattle! It's kind of an old fashioned word, but everyone knows it still I guess.

[@julianmahler2388]

How is "Vieh" old-fashioned, are there any more modern words for it? I think it's as common as Katze (cat) or Hund (dog). You just wouldn't say "Ich habe 26 Vieh" in modern German (edit: rather "Ich habe 26 Nutztiere")

[@LETMino85]

@@julianmahler2388 Are you critizing my comment by actually validating it? Don't get it. But because you ask: I studied Agriculture and like you say, no one really uses "Vieh" anymore. Where I lived in Germany (west, north & central), my grandparent's generation would have used it (And I guess still do if they're still alive) but not now anymore. Having said that, at my uni were a lot of Bavarians and it seems that it still is used somewhat in Bavaria (maybe south generally?). But that seems more of a regional thing.

[@serujiphonx9070]

Das Wort "Vieh" ist wie "Wasser" oder "Milch". Du hast keine 26 Vieh. Du hast 26 Nutztiere, oder du hast Vieh. Ein Wort, dessen singular bereits auf gewisse weise ein Plural ist. Wenn du eine Kuh hast hast du nicht ein Vieh., sondern eine Kuh. "Mein Freund besitzt Vieh; er hat 15 Kühe, 10 Sauen und einige Hennen."

[@M0butu]

In Bayern sagt JEDER Vieh. Und wenn es um die Herdengröße geht, Viecher. Was der Aussprache von "féoh" übrigens noch näher ist.

[@marsultor6131]

@@M0butu hier im Rheinland ähnlich. Wenn man generell von Nutztieren spricht wird einfach nur vom Vieh gesprochen, einzelne Tiere können auch als Viecher bezeichnet werden.

[@ayntmamiagaag]

This was interesting. As a Finn who has studied Swedish, English, and German, I got the gist of all of these sentences.

[@gunnara.7860]

Hi, I am from Sweden. Could I ask you please, how difficult would you think it would be for a Swede to learn Finnish? It's of course in reverse from your perspective, but is there for example a particular part of the language you would estimate to pose a notable challenge?

[@iLolek10]

​@@gunnara.7860 I'm pretty sure that gramatics will kill you. This is something what you have been sequently cutting off from your germanic languages. Symplificating to minimum. Now you don't have it at all. So your simple brains can not get any other language where grammatics still exist. But during this time you have developed your multi dialects. because it was boring for you to use the same words, as your neighbour from other side of the river, hill, or fjord. So today you have so many dialects, that you even don't understand each other. If the one is from few hills or rivers away. You don't have grammar, cause you hahe kill it. But you are proud of your 150 prymitive dialects. Challange for you would be to learn Icelandic grammar. They still have some left. Maybe this is why they didn't have developed different dialects. but still have one language.

[@remuslupin5923]

iLolek im pretty sure that Germanic Languages have Grammar. As an example, German still has three articles that change throughout the different cases. So you have to watch out which article you can use with which preposition bc those are case specific too. My personal belief is that learning a new language is always hard, no matter which language you are learning.

[@metalmeisje]

This is so COOL!!! With the second example I immediately keyed into the 'belifan' meaning remain, because in Dutch it's 'blijven' - but seeing how English speakers parse it as 'believe' makes so much sense. This is fascinating!! (I'm bingewatching this entire show now, haha!)

[@krafthund]

"Min hus" is literally current Swiss German.

[@SchmulKrieger]

Because Swiss German or a lot of alemanic German dialects haven't made through the vowel shift, whereas they have made the most complete sound shift (high German).

[@magmalin]

@@SchmulKrieger rather Mittelhochdeutsch

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@magmalin Mittelhochdeutsch beschreibt eine Zeit, in der eine bestimmte Stufe des Hochdeutschen gesprochen wurde. Es handelt sich aber immer noch um das Hochdeutsche.

[@magmalin]

@@SchmulKrieger Mittelhochdeutsche Dokumente sind vorallem in Süddeutschland, im Südwesten gefunden worden. Was soll das mit dem vermeintlichen "Hochdeutsch" zu tun haben?

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@magmalin ich nehme an, dass du kein Germanist bist.

[@theTHwa3tes11]

French: I'm gonna end this language's whole lexical similarity.

[@Mullkaw]

😈

[@jprec5174]

Damn Normands ruining the English language.

[@Ash_Lawless]

@@jprec5174 start speaking Aglish then.

[@rngnv4551]

*snort laughs* Too true.

[@mrscreamer379]

The Normans just gave us extra words. They didn't take much away. So they give us a word like centre. But we also still have the word middle. We didn't lose it.

[@katylyn1644]

Me, as a german-speaking Austrian, nearly understands every sentence.

[@ShudoukenTV]

The one with the flowers is pretty close to how we would say it.

[@HuSanNiang]

me as German speaking Austrian got 2 of them almost correct. Maybe I use to some older English though.

[@dannylojkovic5205]

mik kyo Sie verstehen mehr Englisch als ich haha

[@makspaua9838]

feoh, sounds like Vieh in German. Especially me as a bavarian (upper palatinate area) feoh is even pronounced "Viech". Love it!

[@gbolahano9851]

Hit's Sumer. Se blõman sindan hēr. German: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier.

[@H0llaZ1990]

Det är sommar. Blommorna är här.

[@GdotWdot]

Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier.

[@wingedhussar1117]

Her we habban... I do not speak Old English, but as a German native speaker that sounds incorrect to me because in German we would say "Hier haben wir" (verb second order) and not "her we habban" :) Here is what I understood without reading the subtitles: Ic habbe syx ond twentig feoh butan min hus. = Ich habe sechsundzwanzig ... mein Haus. (I don´t understand "feoh" and "butan"; but I assume that "feoh" may be a noun and "butan" a preposition).... "butan" could also be a verb... maybe "bauen" (to build)??? (After I saw the solution: "feoh" = "Vieh"... Oh, I could have seen that... but "Vieh" does not have a plural form in German... In German you cannot say "Ich habe 26 Vieh in meinem Haus", only "Tiere") "Bedat eowra handa to belifan hal."

[@Fenditokesdialect]

It is Summer. The Blooms/blosoms are here.

[@Liftinglinguist]

@@H0llaZ1990 Det er sommer. Blomstene er her. I got the last sentence quickly, "bloman" was easy enough and "sindan" sounded so much like "sind" in German. Got all three sentences more or less correctly, in the first one I figured it was sheep (får) or simply livestock in general, and thought of "fe", which is a Norwegian word used for farm animals in general (usually pertains to sheep, cows, and pigs though). "Bufe" is another form, meaning much the same, but used mostly in rural regions and dialects. I don't think my connection with the Swedish "nötkreatur" would have been as useful in this instance! :P

[@yn6292]

I feel like if this guy doesn't already know dutch he'd pick it up within a week.

[@yatoxic1213]

Denk het ook!

[@davedevosbaarle]

Zeker weten

[@buffycleaveland8116]

I was thinking similar to Dutch! I started to learn a little bit of Dutch and Celtic on Duolingo, the app, and it sounds similar.

[@mainstay.]

It's strange, the first thing I heard when he started to speak was a South Afrikan accent - which would fit with your Dutch connection.

[@Cindy99765]

@@mainstay. Afrikaans!

[@Robeuten]

Me as a Frisian - sounds like my father talking....

[@jhde9067]

Frisian?where are you from?

[@stoottroeper2885]

Kom je uit de provincie Friesland?

[@Murkelsable]

@@jhde9067 Friesland. It's a province in the Netherlands with their own language, Frisian. The only province with their own language. The rest of the country speaks Dutch.

[@georgenovak2395]

@@jhde9067 He is from the Netherlands

[@TT-Freak]

@@Murkelsable There are also Friesen in Germany who stil speak it and can communicate with the dutch friesen as afaik.

[@laustudie]

For a dutch person knowing english and a bit of latin this is suprisingly easy to read. Only the letters are quite different, but it sounds pretty familiar.

[@Safiyahalishah]

I'm very amused at the Australian's and the American's reaction to the idea that German capitalises all nouns. So did we, just three centuries ago!

[@gunnara.7860]

I read some danish Text from the End of the 19th Century, and even there were Nouns capitalized.

[@lottecooper4370]

after years of studying English it's still weird sometimes to not capitalise nouns!

[@HesseJamez]

It's useful in german, because we use plural-suffix "en" for verbs + nouns. Buchen = beech trees / buchen = to book, Fallen= traps / fallen = to fall...etc. Hence nouns and verbs often look the same.

[@galier2]

@@HesseJamez Wir haben liebe Genossen / Wir haben Liebe genossen (we have dear comrads / we have enjoyed love)

[@Kammreiter]

galier2 - genial. Allerdings fangen die angelsächsischen Werbetexter langsam auch an, Nomen zu kapitalisieren. Was das Produkt herausstellt 😎

[@Roozyj]

I'm Dutch and my English and German are both pretty good. I came up with: - I have 26 sheep outside of my house - Wash your hands to stay out of Hell? - It’s summer, the flowers are here (or the flowers are gone) The Dutch word for cattle is 'vee' in Dutch, so I don't know why I settled on sheep particularly xD The possiblity for 'gone' instead of 'here' came from the German word 'her' which means 'in the past'

[@MiyaMam948]

"Wash your hands to stay out of Hell" I want that on a shirt

[@MyrtleP]

I guess "cleanliness is next to godliness." haha

[@dr_j0nes]

Her = Hier = Here

[@nathalie9905]

Ik dacht 'veulens' in plaats van schapen. Maar dat leek me onwaarschijnlijk, want wie heeft er in godsnaam 26 veulens?

[@matildas3177]

I instantly thought of sheep as well, in Swedish it translates to "får" which sound similar enough to feoh to be a root word to it.

[@alessandrodornelles9159]

Some that I think would be interesting: Dutch vs German Icelandic vs Danish and Swedish (or Norwegian) Interlingua vs Spanish, French and Romanian (or some other representative selection of Romance languages)

[@erikbogerd7864]

Dutch vs German would be interesting, but it would probably be difficult to find Dutch speakers who didn't learn some German

[@petrbelousov1441]

I watch channel "easy German" and there Cari (who leads the channel) had conversations with Dutch and Danish speakers. It was impressive how common the languages have :) Yes, maybe Norbert could invite them to his channel.

[@o-hogameplay185]

dutch vs german is interesting. i leanr german is school, but thanks to english and german, i can understand 90% of dutch. but for me (you are free to correct me if i am wrong), the dutch grammar is much easier than german (sounds like english grammar), but since dutch says the words like german, i like it. ( i dont like english words, i like german, for me the german words are easier, but english grammar is easier tha german. but dtuch look like "let"s mix the good things, and create the dutch language" xdd)

[@alessandrodornelles9159]

@@erikbogerd7864 Oh, what about German speakers who don't know Dutch? I think it's okay if the person speaking knows the language of the person listening, it's the other way around that can be a problem.

[@erikbogerd7864]

@@alessandrodornelles9159 True, in my experience, Germans can understand some Dutch when you speak slowly and enunciate very clearly, but this becomes significantly harder at a conversational pace

[@dinamite7523]

I'm Afrikaans from south africa and got the first and third sentences almost exactly right. Interesting

[@pocketdynamo5787]

They're all rather simple for me as a native German speaker, especially the third example. "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier."

[@GiaGwendoline]

Yes that one was pretty easy for a German speaker. And the other ones made a lot of sense too when explained. "Ich habe sechsundzwanzig Vieh außerhalb meines Hauses." - "Badet eure Hände um heile zu bleiben." You can see that the languages are related.

[@Swaxdude]

Even closer in Dutch: Het is zomer, de bloemen zijn hier.

[@mayou7381]

OH REALLY???

[@GiaGwendoline]

@@verusmember997 well, you wouldn't say the sentence like that, you would say "Wascht eure Hände um gesund zu bleiben." You don't say a person is "heile", a person is "gesund" (healthy). But there can be a "Heilung" (cure) for an illness. Or a broken bone or wound would "heilen" (heal)

[@cfjooijevaar1]

Nice! Now I understand why the English and the Dutch, who spoke Diets in medieval times had little difficulties to trade, because they understood each other.

[@zorradone]

and the Frisians een more....

[@cfjooijevaar1]

@@zorradone But the Frisians traded more with the Scandinavians.

[@maaliseppo6616]

@@cfjooijevaar1 p

[@baqikenny]

ok for the "wholeness" as "healthy" concept, it's also in a lot more other languages, for example in chinese, 健全 means "healthy wholeness"

[@jannis95]

It was unexpectedly easy for me as a native German speaker to figure out a lot of these sentences.

[@NinoMit87]

As a Dutch I understand 80% of the sentences immidiatly. Makes my curious to study Old English :)

[@ByronVII白耳義]

try modern English first

[@diggis79]

@@ByronVII白耳義 my experience of the Dutch is their English is of a higher standard than the native speakers.

[@ByronVII白耳義]

@@diggis79 I understand that, but I said it jokingly since Johannes didn't manage to spell properly, for example "immidiatly" should be "immediately"

[@siraco4278]

@@diggis79 I live in the Netherlands and this is absolutely not true.

[@mariadamen7886]

@@ByronVII白耳義 So because of a typo you decide to leave a childish comment?

[@zenaku1338]

E: I have twenty-six cows (cattle) outside my house. OE: Ic hæbbe syx ond twentig fēoh būtan mīn hūs. D: Ik heb zesentwintig koeien (vee) buiten mijn huis. G: Ich habe sechsundzwanzig Kühe (Stück Vieh) außerhalb meines Hauses. E: Wash your hands to stay healthy. OE: Bēðaþ ēowre handa to belīfan hāl. D: Was jullie handen om gezond te blijven. G: Wascht eure Hände um gesund zu bleiben. E: It's summer. The flowers are here. OE: Hit's sumer. Se blōman sindan hēr. D: Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier. G: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier.

[@sergeilazarev6626]

the best comparison, well done, dude!

[@vojvoda-draza]

Dutch is very very close

[@tomaszgarbino2774]

@@AndersGehtsdochauch Kann “baußen” statt “draußen” überhaupt in die Frage kommen? Vielleicht in einer deutschen Mundart? Würde iregendjemand es verstehen? Nach Wiktionary wäre es das ethymologische Gegenstück von altenglischem "buten".

[@jensputzlocher8345]

@@AndersGehtsdochauch Genau: Niederdeutsch ist der Schlüssel zum Verständnis: "Färse, Färske oder Färskoh" ist ein noch nicht geschlechtsreifes Rind (meine Platt sprechenden Großeltern waren Bauern). "Buten" heißt "draußen" oder "außerhalb": Yes, Lower German is the key to understand the sentence: "Färse, Färske oder Färskoh" In that language means a not sexually mature Cow (my Lower German speaking grandparents were Farmer). "buten" means "out of" or "outside". In the eastfalien Dialect of Lower German: "Ik have sis-un-twintich färsen butten vor min Haus!"

[@jarls5890]

NO: Jeg har seks og tjue fe utenfor mitt hus. NO: Vask dine hender og behold helsen. NO: Det er sommer. Blomstene er her.

[@FrankNestel]

The point when you realize that being a native German, somewhat fluent in English and trying to learn Icelandic kind would have helped you to decipher Old English quite well. Thank you guys! That was fun.

[@MichaelKingsfordGray]

It's all Dutch to me...

[@111elf1]

in Austrian, we have the Word "Viech" for animal (cattle or pigs). Plural Viecha. it is dialect, but used in Bavaria and many parts of Austria to the day.