English vs German vs Dutch vs Afrikaans | West Germanic Language Comparison REACTION
2023 ж. 6 Мау.
50 182 Рет қаралды
English vs German vs Dutch vs Afrikaans | West Germanic Language Comparison REACTION
This is my reaction to English vs German vs Dutch vs Afrikaans | West Germanic Language Comparison
I have explored the German language in previous video and I am really enjoying learning about it but today we are looking at West Germanic Language as a whole and comparing 4 languages within that (English, German, Dutch and Afrikaans). Tell me what you think about these.
Original Video - • English vs. German vs....
Understanding Dutch as a German depends on where you grew up - if you grew up in a Flat German region you can understand basic Dutch, due to it's similarities to Flat German -- but if you grew up in an Allemanic or other Southern dialect region of Germany, you struggle a lot with Dutch.
Definitely works with Westphalian "Platt" lower German, too, the closer you get to the border here, the bigger are the chances that you can actually learn Dutch in school even :3
As a speaker of Westphalian Platt I can understand most of the Afrikaans and Dutch sentences. Afrikaans even better, because it's older and even closer to the old German Platt dialects.
Actually, it's primarily a matter of exposure. I learned Dutch to the point I could read books by quickly doing the Duolingo English course for Dutch speakers backwards. (There was no Dutch course at all at the time, and also no German course for Dutch speakers.) I just needed it for getting a feeling for a few basic words as well as the systematic differences. After that it was just reading and watching videos, and understanding enough to enjoy them while learning a little bit more about the language. Dutch speakers have more reason to go through this than German speakers. (German films with subtitles on TV, generally more German than Dutch speakers and media.) When a Dutch speaker and a German speaker have done this, they can have bilingual conversations in the same way that speakers of different dialects do, or speakers of different Scandinavian languages. The same seems to be true between Dutch and Afrikaans and theoretically also with German and Afrikaans. Between German/Dutch/Afrikaans and English, it's a little bit harder and this technique works only to a limited extent.
As a swabian I totally can read dutch and understand 98%.admittedly I also understand low german,apart from few words.
RICHTIG: P;ATTDEURTSCH IS EEN MORE SIMILAR TO DUTSCH than all the other exampls you userd,
I was on a train in the UK and was talking in German to my friend. The man opposite from us at some point interrupted us in Afrikaans and asked us whether we could understand him because he could understand us. And we did! We chatted for a while, us speaking German and him speaking Afrikaans. We had to clarify some stuff in English but it worked surprisingly well.
For a german person, written dutch, lesser english and afrikaans is understandable. There are many german words, which are rare used, outdated or which appear only in some german dialects, which are similar to dutch. For example ziekenhuis for Krankenhaus Huis is clearly Haus and zieken clearly a Siech, a very ill and weak person, who ( in german) dahinsiecht. Gunsteiig klaer- Lieblingsfarbe, in german a Günstling is a person, liked and supported by a mighty person. German Pferd- english horse, but german Ross exists also. German Hund- english dog, but an english hound is a hunting dog, while german Dogge is a Mastiff. See also : Gockel- cock or Gais- goat, Sau- sow, Küken -chicken.....
Afrikaans is an dialect from older dutch due the Netherlands colonized south Africa. That's why it is so close to German. It is completely different than all other native African languages
High Dutch made a lot of changes to simplify the grammar, which may make it easier to learn it. German changed the font^^ (no really, Hitler forbid the traditional and then common fonts to make German easier to learn in preparation for annexing the whole world, since all these new territories would have to learn German. Kurrent and Fraktur were apparently to difficult.) But kept the grammar mostly the same. Which allows to construct sentences in such intricate ways, that it is a poets wet dream.
@@SchwachsinnProduzent The whole world? Nomen est omen. The rest is correct.
And they seem to retain some older dutch/platt vokabulary. Like praat for spreek. Perhaps its used in today's Dutch as well? (All I know is that we can say prat, prata, etc. in my native swedish, which of course is related to low german and dutch.)
As a soetie I love Afrikaans
There is a also a strong Indonesian slave language slant to Afrikaans vocabulary... And as much as they are now Africans, so is Afrikaans.
6:31 There it is! We say "Trekker" in northern Germany too. It comes from the Plattduitsk "trekken" which means "to pull something"! Language is fascinating :)
Trek comes from the same root as the English word drag. The English version shows some Norse influence, as the modern Norwegian for pull or drag is 'dra'...and that leads to yet another English word meaning to pull, which is draw. Draw goes way beyond just zeichnen in English, as we can also draw breath, draw water up from a well...or even those things you pull out from a Kommode, that you keep your shirts in...drawers. The old word for black is swart, which we still have in the word swarthy, meaning someone of dark appearance. I think black has come from the Anglo Norse word for ink. In Norwegian that is still blekk. English also retains the Old Germanic word for horse, which was hros. There are two brothers mentioned in early English history, as leading the first invasions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes into Britain. one was called Hengist (stallion...Hengst) and the other was called Horsa. As you say, language is fascinating. :)
Dutch uses tractor and trekker equally, so yeah, trekker is very much the dutch word as well
Des hoast Bulldog!
@@alfresco8442the word Ross still exists in German.. tractor or Traktor goes back to Latin Trahere,traho, tregi, tractum to pull... so there must be a very early comon root, because as you wrote, to drag has Norde influences but it is definitely related to the Latin word as well...
Star Trek 🤪Zu den Sternen trekken...
These are the 4 languages I can understand the best. I'm German but grew up in South Africa and had to learn Afrikaans in school, and live in Scotland now. Learned a bit of Dutch recently on duolingo and was surprised that it was almost too easy. The Dutch brought slaves from Malaysia to South Africa so a couple of words in Afrikaans are of Malay origin.
Your observation that English is the odd one out among Germanic languages is spot on. English is part of the family, but split off 1,500 years ago, and went its own way after that., whereas the continental Germanic languages remained in contact. The major difference that sets English apart is due to the Norman conquest, which caused English to absorb enormous amounts of French words. Dutch and German have some French loanwords as well, but not nearly as many.
English is not really the "odd one out" or the "one that went its own way" as this comparison seems to imply (though this seems to get regurgitated over and over), as Icelandic and Faroese are the Germanic languages that really deserve that distinction, they are more insular and split-off from other continental languages than English ever was. Throughout English's history, even after its initial separation from other Germanic languages, it has always maintained close contact with them, via Low German, Middle Dutch, and Old Norse itself. French has a lot of Germanic words in it as well, from the Franks, Normans, and English.
@@brianlewis5692 you didn't get the point. Of course is English the odd one out of those four languages since it is, like the other three, a western Germanic language whilst the two examples you gave are northern Germanic languages. That means they where separated already before (!) German, Dutch, English and Afrikaans, did split up. The reason for English being the odd one was well explained. It had a huge impact by French and Old Danish. And it's Grammer was shaped by the fact that the local Britishs (Celtics) learned Anglo Saxon as a foreign language and did what people do when they learn a foreign language without being corrected. What is more funny, or strange, is that the Germanic Englishs took over those changes of the Grammer. The Celtic impact was not huge but significant. The use of 'to do' is the most prominent one I know of. It is not normal to add 'to do' in the way English speakers do it into a sentence for Germanic speakers, but it is normal for Celtics. But the big oddness of German is that our language went through 'Grimm's law'. That is the shift of consonants in German when compared to the other Western Germanic languages. That makes the difference between Hochdeutsch (nowadays standard German) and Niederdeutsch. That is why Northgerman Dialect speakers have an easier time with Dutch and English than us South- (aka Highland-) Germans. Examples of what Grimm's law do to words: Apple to Apfel Water to Wasser Ik to ich make to machen Perd to Pferd (here English just invented a new word to not having to compete with the German invention😂) Monk to Mönch So yes, English is, in many ways, the odd one out of the sample, but all of them changed through time.
@@michaelhuttig6596 the english word for horse is interesting. i don´t know where exactly it originates, but according to legend the first germans/saxons that entered britain were the two saxon brothers hengist and horsa. and "hengst" today in german still means stallion. the cultural coexistance with horses and their use runs very deep in german history.
@@weisthor0815 hello, I haven't been online for more than a week, therfore I didn't get your comment till now. That idea sounds a bit mythical to me, in other words, not too rational. But it is an interesting one. I mean, the thought that two brothers that come to a new place can convince all the rest that come with them, or short after them, to use the name of one of the two brothers as a new word for perd seems not too logical. But his name is too close to the word horse to deny a connection. Most likely the word did already exist and his name derived from it. Surely we just have to search the internet for the answer 😁 But it is more fun to use our own brain cells. Another, old, Germanic word for those funny animals is "Mare". That one is nowadays still in use (rare use though) in German in form of "alte Märe", referring to an old, worn out, working horse. And sometimes misused for an old car. And it is found in the words Marshall and Marstall. Mar for horse and Stall for stable. And the guy who ran the King's horses stable and was in charge of it became synonym with it. Therfore he was called Marstall himself. Later that changed into Marshall. Later on it became the name of a rank at the King's court and his military. The King came to the conclusion that he needed more servants with a similar competence in their specific fields. So you found Marshalls of the field (think Rommel, Feldmarschall) and marine and even airforces around the world and the connection to the poor old Märe went finally lost.
@@michaelhuttig6596 as i said, it is a legend. google will reveal more of it if you are interested :-) but germans and horses go back very long, so it is not surprising that horses have an important role in germanic folklore and legends. this is especially true for saxons. even today all modern german states from where the old saxons originate bear a white horse on red ground in their banner, the so called saxon steed. it is very old an can also still be found in kent, the south eastern corner of england, where the saxons landed for the first time about 1500 years ago. Mare or Mähre in german is a word known to me (i am german). as you said, it means old work horse, but always a female one. the connections to marshall were unknown to me, but if you think about it it is quite obvious. very interesting.
I'm South African. I can read Dutch quite easily as an Afrikaans speaker, but it's much harder to understand spoken Dutch for me. The Dutch is spoken quite rapidly compared to Afrikaans, and the accent is a little strange, almost like Afrikaans spoken by someone with an English accent to my ears. Thanks for the insight on Piesang. Makes sens if you say the word is from Malaysia. We started as a Dutch Colony in the Cape with Malay slaves being imported. Afrikaans is a mix of mainly Dutch and French Hugenots with words borrowed from other colonial nationalities.
Same for me. As a German I a can read a lot Dutch. But I only understand a little bit of spoken Dutch.
@@TASCOLP I am from Belgium! ( in the north the speak dutch) I can understand south africa very wel acutualy it sounds more like a accent or something!
I lived ZA, Table View a few years and for a Swiss person I found it not difficult to read Newspaper or follow Bok Radio. Helped me a lot to get used to Afrikaans. "kan nie kla nie " was the first I understood straight away. Very close to my Swissgerman " cha nid chlage" - cheers
Same here. I've read some books in Afrikaans but it's harder to understand spoken Afrikaanns.
I've heard that the Afrikaners have a much easier time to understand Flemish (Dutch spoken in Belgium) as it retains alot more of the older aspects of Dutch, in combination with the accent that lay at the foundation of Afrikaans.
As a northern german I get half of what dutch people say by default. Our own minority language platt is very similar and during the middle ages we shared a trading network called the Hanse witch used platt as a common language. Also Afrikaans is a language that developed in dutch colonies and is there fore very similar.
I'm Dutch and I can read Afrikaans with like 90% full understanding and 10% educating guessing/hypothesizing and looking for confirmation further down the text. Speaking is a little bit more difficult at first, the sound is different and the familiarity can also trap you. But yes, I can have a conversation with an Afrikaner if we both speak our own language, we will have misunderstandings but get there eventually, joining a conversation in Afrikaans would be a lot harder and for speaking it well there are just a lot of words that are different to learn just like with another language like German. So for just getting by, compromised but effective communication it's like almost the same language, for becoming fluent and conversing well it's almost like any other foreign language. It's also a very interesting language, with words often funny to Dutch people because of it's even more 'tell it like it is' than Dutch, like 'kameelperd' which just means camelhorse. It also started as a spoken language, by sailors with Dutch but also German and French background and later Malayans, so it's partly simplified 17th century Dutch. Actually the first script Afrikaans was written in was the Arabic script, by Malayans. The captains and higher staff would write their logs, reports and letters in proper Dutch.
I am German and i oddly understand some clear german words in Afrikaans and then it changes to another kind of Dutch for me :D Also, i am pretty sure you understand Germans better than vice versa. Your language sounds kinda funny to us but i'm sure you heard that before^^ But i am from northern Germany and i learnt some "Plattduitsk" from my grandma in my childhood. And that is very near to Dutch, i think. 6:31: There it is! We say "Trekker" in northern Germany too. It comes from the Plattduitsk "trekken" which means "to pull something"! Language is fascinating :)
This is so true. As an Afrikaans speaker I have a love for Dutch. Reading Dutch is like Reading Afrikaans with a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes. I can understand Dutch if spoken with a neutral accent and not to fast. Afrikaans is like a simplified version of Dutch.
Man darf aber auch nicht vergessen das es im niederländischen und im deutschen wie wahrscheinlich auch im englischen verschiedene Dialekte gibt.
As a second language Afrikaans speaker German is easy for me to learn more so than Dutch to be honest. I can speak English as my home language, Afrikaans second and German will soon be my third language. I want to learn french because I'm actually of French and German decent. My father is German and mothers side of the family is french. So I'm a mixture of both.
The video was very well done. I'm just a little uncertain if the German speaker was a native. "Sechs" is one of those exceptions that are usually pronounced with a "k" sound instead of the usual "ch" sound. This can also happen in reverse. When an adjective ends with "-ig", the Standard German pronounciation is "-ich".
I also agree that the German word for "6" sechs has been pronounced a kind of swiss type.
Have never heard somebody saying „Könich“ or „günstich“ in Southern Germany. Except for German teachers and people coming from the North.
i am sure the german speaker was a southerner trying to speak standard german. overcompensated a little, we do that for the tourists.
the funny thing about that is that many germans do not know that the southerners who make a large part of the population do pronounce word endings differently. we can say bergig, when up north they may say berchich. our german is just as legit as the german spoken elsewhere
@@uliwehner I'm not denying its legitimacy, it's just standard practice that language learning begins with standardized dialects that have as much reach as possible. In Germany, English learners usually begin with "Received Pronounciation", the standardized British dialect of the Royal Family and British news outlets. When learning German as a foreign language, most start with standardized "Hochdeutsch" which involves pronouncing "-ig" as "-ich".
The Afrikaans language have adopted many words and terms from English, German and Dutch. The base language is Dutch. Until 1890 something, Dutch was the language. From then on the speakers started to change the pronunciation and Afrikaans was born. Today it is a language that can stand on it's own feet. Indonesian and Dutch and Afrikaans sounds the same but spelling differs. For the record, I am Afrikaans speaking.
Afrikaans is an old form of Dutch (emmigrants to SA in the 17th cent.) - Northern Germans often speak "Plattdeutsch" (Low German), very near to Dutch an Old English. For me as from Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) I mostly understand 80-90% of the written Dutch. The rest I do with my Danish, learned here at school. ;-) Piesang/banana - remenber: Indonesia was a Dutch colony over many centuries and South Africa lies on the sea route from there to The Netherlands (see: Dutch East India Company, VOC). BWT: the girl left above uses "US English", not the UK variant (hound / dog) 06:28 - We in N-Germany say "Trecker" in Platt. 09:10 - "ziekenhuis" - german old style "Siechenhaus" ("siechen" = krank sein / to be ill / sick) see: "Seuche" (plague) in German.
One time I saw a north german horse owner (he talked 'platt', which is used in most of Germany's coast regions) visiting a South African horse owner and they both talked in their tongues about horses, health and about the general conditions of a purchase contract. It seemed they had only minimal Problems to understand each other. Fascinating to watch them
As a German Dutch is quite easy to understand - especially written Dutch. Understanding the spoken language is a little harder. There are quite a few words where you can clearly see that they derived from an old word which was used in both languages and then developed into different directions. For example: "ziekenhuis" sounds very similar to "Siechenhaus" which was used in German in the middle ages to describe some kind of hospital (acutally a place for severely/terminally ill people, often infectious - "dahinsiechen" = to slowly/painfully die).
Even between English and German you can do that. Although, it helps to know a lot of archaic words in English
We're all fairly closely related indeed. If you know some more archaic words and Dutch dialects, you can see quite a few similarities to English as well. For instance, we say 'ziekenhuis' now, but 'hospitaal' also used to be an option (mostly out of fashion now). For German there are more similarities, especially if you compare some of the dialects like Ostfriesisch.
@@arjan_speelman Ziekenhuis is a cognate of the English sickhouse, the archaic word for hospital. Also, Frisian is a separate language, and actually more closely related to English than Dutch.
@@arjan_speelman Hospital is also out of fashion in German, but you may still find it in older texts. If you compare neighbouring dialects, you will see a lot more similarities than with the High languages. As someone from a region, that speaks a form of (Ost-)Südniederfränkisch (also called Limburgisch especially across the border; here it's just called Platt), understanding someone from e.g. Sittard or Heerlen is much easier than someone from the north east of the netherlands, that is more closely related to Niedersächsisch or part of Frisisch or someone speaking pure High Dutch.
For me (northern German) the exact opposite is true. I can understand it better when I listen, than when I read. I find the pronunciations to be closer related to how I speak. But when I see the word written down I have no idea what it means.
maybe recommended often? I think a video from RobWords may be of interest to you? The title is "How anyone (including YOU) can read German". Thanks for your vids
It gets even more fun once you throw old English into the mix because that basically shares all grammar with current day German and Dutch. Also there were a lot more similar words (some are still used to an extend like "hound" as you pointed out). In a class of English speakers who have to learn old English you can usually tell immediately which of them have learned German before.
I‘m from the northsea cost aprox 20km away from the nederlands. If the dutch people speak clear and slowly, it is possible for me to understand almost everything. It‘ll get harder to understand on the westcoast of the nederlands. I speak „Plattdeutsch“ and able to understand also most of Afrikaans. Many words of out Plattdeutsch are similiar to english words like döör for door. Especiallly old english has many similiar words. More? If you speak Plattdeutsch like your grandparents, you can understand a lot of swedish words too. Be smart - learn Plattdeutsch😅
Very entertaining thank you! I had English/German parents growing up in South Africa years ago and Afrikaans was spoken in many regions. My childhood friends we native Africans and Zulu was my 'natural' language growing up, and which I still love. It was not uncommon that many spoke four or more languages. Now living in New Zealand for many years and I have Dutch friends, but closer to Afrikaans for me is Flemish, we can have a fluid conversation, Its quite funny when Dutch/Flemish/Afrikaans are on the go at the same time, then we all switch to German for a laugh and some practice. I've started learning Italian and enjoy the melody of the words, which goes with much gesturing.
Once I went on a trip through South Africa with a South African tourguide. He spoke Afrikaans to us, we spoke Dutch to him and we could understand nearly everything. There were just some words that were different. The funniest was when he asked for a name of one of our ‘naastbestaande’, someone close to you as an emergency contact. It’s sound very similar to the Dutch word ‘nabestaande’, which means your next of kin after you’ve died. We thought, what kind of trip were we going on? 😅
"Naasbestaande" means "next of kin" in Afrikaans also. However, it is mainly used on forms these days to denote an "emergency contact."
very close to "nahestehend" in german. "someone standing close by". not like the person next to me but like a family member, lover or close friend.
@@crazy_sauer In Dutch we would call them ‘naasten’, those close to you in a relational aspect. So ‘naastbestaanden’ (which translates well into ‘nahestehend’) in Dutch sounds like a combination of ‘naasten’ and ‘nabestaanden’. This last word could be literally translated as those who exist after you.
@@anouk6644 Ah yes ... like "my nearest" - "meine Nächsten". Or in the Bible: "liebe deinen nächsten wie dich selbst" - love thy neighbor (german: Nachbar) as thyself. One more: "Der nächste bitte!" - "Next one please!" waiting at the doctors office.
Dis snaaks😂...ek vind Duits as een pragtige taal, die dame se aksent was welluidend om te hoor, sy spreek/praat mooi. Don't translate it😂
I am half british and half german so I'm bilingual. As a kid I also learned to speak dutch so now I can understand some Afrikaans too when I hear it speaking but not all. My dutch is also not the best but i can understand 90%of a conversations with only learning it by hearing and interacting with dutch people
I’m Afrikaans and have conversed with Dutch speakers relatively easily in the past. There are some very distinct differences but we end up understanding one another almost perfectly 😊
Presies, ons moet net soms die sinonieme gebruik, bv. in plaas van "gunsteling" gebruik "lieflings" en pleks van "praat" gebruik "spreek", cause it's evident that using the similar word in meaning and close in pronunciation to theirs will make it way better to converse, but 𝒛𝒆𝒌𝒆𝒏𝒉𝒖𝒊𝒔/𝒛𝒊𝒆𝒌𝒆𝒏𝒉𝒖𝒊𝒔 is a no-no!!
When I was a small german kid, I went to the netherlands like twice a year for some weeks of holidays. It's possible to understand it, as it is very similiar to german - especially while talking. A few easy examples: "Hallo" (GER) vs "Hallou" (NL)" ... "Gut" vs. "Goed" ... "Gut, danke!" vs. "Goed, dank u!" ... And if you live near by the border - which I did - ... you know some words of their lanuage as they know some words of your language, too. But beside of it, there are so many similiar words, that you kind of know what they are talking about. Like f.ex.: fragen/vragen, antworten/antwoorden, schlafen/slapen, lesen/lezen, Brot/Brood, Fleisch/Vlees, Butter/Boter ... and so on! :)
as a 'central western' german i can understand some _written_ dutch - most of it when it's an easy text , but only the general topic when it's a complicated text. but understanding _spoken_ dutch is very hard. it's relatively easy to see the similar roots of words in written dutch (even when these words are old fashioned or 'unusual' in modern german), but their pronounciation is so different.
As a German I once passed through the Netherlands in my car and was listening to the radio. I couldn't understand one single sentence at all.
Funnily enough pisang is also very common word in the Dutch dictionary. "De pisang zijn..." meaning being screwed. It more than likely arrived in South Africa by the Dutch who started colonizing Indonesia in 1816 (until 1941).
the dutch started colonizing indonesia in the 17th century, the government though got full control over the colony in 1816 after the voc was abolished and the french occupiers kicked out of the netherlands
What does "ek gaan jou 𝒎𝒐𝒆𝒓" mean in dutch?
@@thegreytone The term moer isn't used in contemporary Dutch any longer. At least not as far as I am aware. ps. It would mean the same as in Afrikaans. It wasn't an invitation to dance was it? 😂🤣
@@forkless lol it's an invitation to get your ass kicked basically, threatening someone. "Ek gaan jou in jou moer maak" 😅
Afrikaans developed from the Dutch being in South Africa. It's kind of a Dutch Creole language. Edit: When I was in South Africa on vacation Dutch people said Afrikaans sounds to them like small kids speaking Dutch. Some Germans understand Dutch pretty well, depending on how close to the Netherlands you live and how much dialect you usually speak. I'm from the region around Kassel, Central Germany. I don't understand spoken Dutch in most cases. But I understand a lot of written Dutch, when it's not too dificult - like a menu in a restaurant.
I like the comment on Ross and Horse because it reminds me of a few words in English and Dutch in which the R switched places. Brest - Borst; Christmas - Kerstmis Crust - Korst Wart - Wrat Corn - Koren Current - Krent Press - Pers Horse - (H)ros
Hi Mert... I guess you have to do a reaction to this video: "How anyone (including YOU) can read German"... I came across this a few weeks ago and it was really eye opening. It is about the differences between German an d English and how similar they still are when reversing some of the changes that came in time.
Great video,indeed.
Yes, very good video and it implicitly explains that English, German and also Dutch come from the same base language called proto-Germanic.
Btw Dutch is the 'middle man' for English and German.
Fun story: I am generally good with languages, and usually, when I go to the Netherlands, it takes me three days give or take, to immerse in the language and start switching to understand most of it by hearing. Some years ago, though, I got off the train at Amsterdam Centraal and was walking out of the station when I overheard to ladies having a conversation. I wasn't exactly focussing on them but got most of what they were saying, so I proudly thought, wow, I'm getting really good at Dutch, immersion went quickly this time! And I turned my attention fully to them - turned out they were speaking Swiss German.
You already noted it with "hound", but there are two more of interest for German: "Hospital" and "Ross" (horse). Those languages are related so closely that just picking the right word or phrase can make them look very alike or very alien to each other. Also, English isn't that far off from the others when you know some of the regular consonant shifts (like "z t") and are aware of how fluid vowels are (e.g. German famously has zwei, zwa and zwo; and dialects freely swap a's, o's and e's around).
in the south of germany, bavaria for example, Ross is a perfectly common word still, more so than up north. Ross and Horse have the same root. we also have Gaul for horse. but it has a slightly negative connotation. Ackergaul as opposed to the more fancy riding Pferd.
Yeah in many of the examples where there were significant differences, the Germanic predecessors of theses languages had multiple words for roughly the same thing, but then over many centuries one of these multiple words became dominant in one language and another became dominant in another or the meaning of the words shifted somewhat (eg, hound vs dog). This is not unlike different regions in the UK or Germany sometimes use different words. While in standard German ‘Krankenhaus’ or ‘Klinik’ is the normal term with ‘Hospital’ mostly only used in proper names of specific institutions whose name dates back quite a while, in Switzerland the word ‘Spital’ (a short form of Hospital) is the general term used (not just in spoken Swiss German but also in written ‘standard’ German).
Also trekker for tractor is also used in Dutch.
And 'ros' in Dutch is a synonym for horse, although 'ros' is a more poetic and archaic word in modern usage and 'paard' the actual common word.
I am from South Africa and speak Afrikaans. I equate quite well with Dutch and fairly well with German. The emphasis is on the accents. Like English and Scottish…
The Cape Malay are settlers from Malaysia in Cape Town and some of their words got adopted into Afrikaans.
I'm sure someone has pointed this out already, but in case not......... Afrikaans is Dutch. It is the language used by the dutch settlers (Buuren = farmers) before the English stole it (RSA) away in the Boer (= buur) war. They have diverged over the years but are essentially the same.
You're right, but I think you mean Boeren and Boer, not Buuren and Buur. The Boer wars actually use the Dutch/Afrikaans term.
@@user-xi6nk4xs4s I stand corrected. 👍 Thanks Dude. I speak fluent Germanbut also understand a bit of Dutch. My daughter lives in the Netherlands. Years ago I was at a rugby match in Twickenham, London with an Ozzy friend and some guys from 'Seth Efrika'. They were ripping into the Ozzy and taking the piss thinking no-one could understand them. The day ended badly ....
@@Cowboy-in-a-Pink-Stetson At least it sounds as if you got some fun out of it. :o) Nice combination of languages/dialects at the rugby game.
My dear friend from Scotland who lives in Asia, it is not surprising that the Dutch understand Afrikans as they are the descendants of Dutch settlers there. There were also German farmers but the majority were Dutch who have settled in South Africa since the early 16th century. English and Dutch are Germanic languages and today in the north of the British Isles the older ones still understand the language of the Hanseatic League (Plaatdeutsch/Low german). In the Netherlands the Plaat from Germany is very easy to understand and therefore the North Germans have no problem with each other understand .
Swabian German here - as the languages compared are drifting apart, I am under the impression, that High (Modern) German is farther away from the other Germanic languages than most German dialects spoken (even in the south). It is striking though, how many false friends have been created over time by slight shifts of the meaning. I.e German ‘Vieh’ (cattle) and English ‘Fee’ - pronounced identically, or German ‘ Gift’ (poison) whereas German ‘Mitgift’ and English ‘dowry’.
Mid 17th century correction
5:32 now this is interesting! the afrikaans word for "tiger" is the same as the german word for "animal" :D
"Animal" is "dier" in afrikaans
Afrikaans essentially *is* an overseas (and a bit more archaic as well as influenced by local languages) dialect of Dutch😉. And English of course has had a ton of Norman middle French influences after 1066, most of the words in English that diverge from the rest here are French derived, mostly in matters that concerned the new Norman ruling class, hence the animals are mostly Germanic but it's culinary meat is French derived. Best regards Raoul G. Kunz Best regards Raoul G. Kunz
Lol, I’m Kunz from LA 😂
@@AsphaltCowboyUSA It's a *very* common German last name after all... it's actually a contraction of "Konradius" which is "Conrad"... so it's just generating a last name by mumbling a first name^^. Best regards Raoul G. Kunz
After the Norman conquest English was heavily ifluenced by French and lost a bunch of its Germanic vocabulary. That's why it sometimes seems as the odd one out among the other West Germanic languages. E. g. the word "sausage" derives from Old Northern French "saussiche".
Modern French saucisson is also quite similar.
35% of English vocabulary is from French.The English spoke it for around 300 years, well the Normans forced it on the country. But they spoke old French, the French language evolved and changed. They like to drop their H's a bit like Londoners. Other examples State, student stranger the French replaced the S with an é. Latin to plays a small role . Funny thing a bit off topic. In France a Stop sign is the same, STOP. But if you go to Canada the French speaking part its Arret, the Fench word for stop. Those petty French Canadians must be sooooo pissed off when coming to France and seeing that.
Afrikaans was the language spoken by the Boers, who were Dutch colonists (or colonists brought by the Dutch to the Cape Town region). So it has its origins mostly in Dutch.
Piesang in the African language coms from Malaysian. Both South Africa as Indonesia where Dutch colonies so the language are involved by that. Piesang is also a word most Dutch people will understand
The Afrikaans word „kameelperd“ for „Giraffe“ is like the Greek word „kammilopardali“! The part „…pard…“ means something like dotted or spotted or freckled. Like in the word leopard - dotted lion.
Thank you, that makes so much more sense!
It is literally "camelhorse" (or kameelpaard in dutch), but giraffe is so much cooler; And leopard is "luipaard" in dutch (paard = horse). I still think Aardvark is the coolest dutch name given to an African animal ever. Literally Earth Pig. But Aardvark sounds so much better.
Aardvark is Erdvark in Afrikaans, one of my favourite names are Ystervark literally Iron Pig for porcupine. Or Oogpister a kind of beetle that sprays a stinging liquid into your eyes when it feels threatened. Even in English it's still an Oogpister, David Attenborough pronounces it "ooh-ch-pee-stir" 😂 the "g" in Afrikaans is like the "ch" in "Loch Ness" We call a hippopotamus a seekoei (sea cow) In German it is a Nilpferd (Nile horse) The Greek connection with kamillopardali and leopard or luiperd (Afrikaans) makes a lot of sense especially when you consider that a leopard has spots and a tiger has stripes. Sometimes people would say "there are Tigers in the mountains" but actually they refer to Leopards, because we don't have Tigers here.
Dutch is somewhere in the middle of English and German, which makes sense, considering that it also geographically is in between Germany and UK. Sometimes Dutch sounds similar to German, sometimes it sounds similar to English but it's not close enough to either language for a native English or German speaker to understand it. As a German, I can understand some Dutch words but that's pretty much it. I'm already failing to comprehend a simple Dutch sentence most of the time.
Pisang is also a common term for banana in the Netherlands, due to our former colonial holdings... guess it might be less common these days than when I was little
And for the liquor!
Yeah, piesang is a loan word from Malaysian. Afrikaans, having it's main root in dutch, is also greatly influenced by Malaysian. We use several Afrikaans variations of Malay words in Afrikaans.
Well done Sir, thank you ! There is some historical litrerature, where all shown languages can `sense something`, sense their relative roots: The Bowulf Epos for example, and the opening part of Lieder-Edda (Weissagung der Seherin). Especially the Edda can keep large parts of its Stavreim in old Islandic (quasi Old Norwegian and Danish), when you translate it to German, Dutch or (I am sure) to English. The Mabinogion-Epos from Wales is a totally differnt thing to translate into any of those languages... it`s from another family. I enjoy your Videos very much Sir !
Back in 2018 I used to watch dutch football shows, as I had no access to german tv. After a while and with a little focus I was able to at least understand what they were talking about. And I never listened to dutch before, despite some sports interviews. There are so many similarities.
When studying (in Afrikaans), we frequently had Dutch lecturers. They had to speak slower, but they could be understood. And we had a Dutch book that we had to read in high school
To show the similarities, “horse” is connected to the German word “Ross”, which used to be written “Rhoss”. If you switch the first letters you will end up close to the word “horse”.
Very cool. Now, one could argue that only proper high german us represented, while the local german dialects are closer to one or the other here. 😊
I have been to Holland a lot and can make some sense of a writte text with a little imagination, especially when I have some context what it is generally about. Speaking with people is not that easy. Other languages like Danish or Swedish my work like that as well, but I had little opportunity to really test that yet.
The tractor is in German trekker too.
Actually "Trecker" is a Low German word that somehow found its way into Standard German. Etwas "to trecken" means "zu ziehen", to pull something. My Grandparents used to tell me in the morning: "Treck di mol an!", get dressed.
Afrikaans is a descendant of Dutch, so thence the close similarity. Afrikaans also has a lot of Malay influence, hence their word for 'banana'. It's reportedly easier for a Dutch person to understand Afrikaans than the reverse, since Dutch is grammatically more complex than Afrikaans. With German and Dutch, mutual intelligibility is greatest when seeing the words written down; hearing each other's language is more difficult, especially when it's a German hearing Dutch. I found that English grouped more closely with Dutch/Afrikaans more often or equally as often as German grouped with Dutch/Afrikaans. Dutch is often called a bridge-language between German and English.
I am from Saxony, Germany. When I first heard Dutch, I could understand some words of what was spoken, but not the content of the whole sentences. Later I learnt a bit of Dutch which required far less effort than was needed for learning English. Now I am still a beginner regarding the Dutch language, but I am already able to watch cool Dutch comedy shows (e. g. Arjen Lubach) or documentaries on KZhead, often with Dutch subtitles, but not all the time - I always switch with the C key. And every now and then I have to look up a word or a bunch of words.
How much do you understand of scandinavian languages? (If you ever tried, or even heard them.)
@@herrbonk3635 I've tried, but unfortunately I don't understand very much of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. The distance between German and these three languages is much greater than between German and Dutch. And Finnish of course belongs to a totally different group of languages (Finno-Ugric group). No chances whatsoever for me to understand the Finnish language without learning it.
@@Dragumix I tried to answer you. But for some reason, some 60% of my comments have been censured recently. No idea why.
Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch. Until the early 20th century, it was considered a variety of Dutch so yes, it is descendant from Dutch but has loan words from the native langauges of South Africa as well as Maylay and English.
When I, german, come to the Netherlands and I see signs in shops, on the street etc, I just have to read them out loudly, and then I understand most of the words.
6:30 - In German we say both, it is called Traktor, but we called it normally Trekker.
actually german dialect for tractor is trekker xd and obv the word for banana in afrikaans is older than colonism (probably bananas have always been there) so thats why it differs so much from the rest.
You mentioned that "Pisang" sound similar to the Afrikaans "piesang" - This is due to early Cape Malayan slaves that got incorporated and form a large part of the South African Coloured and Islamic history.
being from southern germany I can say it is possible to get around the netherlands without knowing dutch, it is sometimes a bit of guesswork, but with context clues it's not too hard to figure out what stuff means.
Would like to add a comment about the word “Arbeit/arbeiten”. Like in English, we also have sometimes 2 words for an activity. For example, in German you also have the word “Werk/werken/wirken”. The word “Werken” in German is mainly used for physical work, but the noun “Werk” is used much more, i.e. “Er arbeitet in einer WERKSTATT (he works in a workshop) - or - das ist mein Werk (that is my work). The verb “werken” can be used in German, but us usually replaced with arbeiten or machen…… other words can also be used depends on the circumstances.
Checking out the latest history of South Africa will help you to understand about the similarities between Dutch and Africaans. And as a German I must say I don't understand the Dutch language very well, though they're quite similar. But I live in the South-West of Germany at the French German boarder, maybe that's why.
Afrikaans with English words being incorporated is also a thing in common spoken Afrikaans (even when we have correct Afrikaans words for those things, it just rolls easier). Like the English word ban. We can simply say "Hy was geban" (adding ge at the start most often donates past tense, but kan also make nouns) He was banned. Piesang is from Indonesian, Afrikaans has so many Indonesian words (that sounds Dutch or like they could have been Dutch at some point) Like Baadjie (blazer/jacket). I know German people who have been living in South Africa for decades, they an speak German and Afrikaans but no English, strangely.
7:15 This in very interesting. In Plattdeutsch (a rather older language within northern Germany) there are three possible words for sprechen (to speak) depending on the exact region: snacken, küren and proten. And the last one is similar to Afrikaans.
A reason why you may recognice africaan and dutch words as being part of the malaysian and indonesian language is that the dutch colonised indonesia and had a large influence over the indonesian area for quite a while. Also as you correctly said africaans sound similar to dutch as africaans originates from dutch and english, so the settlers of South Africa.
As a Dutchman, born in Amsterdam, I remember as a child when I saw the news about South Africa. That the president was called De Clerk and spoke with a strange Flemish accent. But it had been an English colony, I didn't understand it at all. Understand Afrikaans even if it sounds like drunk Dutch. I understand 80 percent of German and when we went skiing in Germany and Austria after 2 weeks I could already have conversations.
as standard german w/o any knowledge of dutch i can understand around 30% in conversation ^^
Fun Fact for 6:33 I am from Northern Germany, Hamburg to be clear, and we say Trecker for Traktor as well
You are looking at something that is called High German consonant shift. It describes how from a common West Germanic core, the different languages developed by moving sounds. German for instance moved t at the beginning to ts (written z), k to kh (ch), long oo to au, long ee to ay (ei). Dutch did follow suit partly, but not as completely than German. English in the Middle ages moved in another direction. This shift is not to be confused with Grimm's Law (yes, those Brothers Grimm), which describes how the Germanic languages branched off from Proto-Indo-European by another set of sound shifts.
Afrikaans and Dutch people can usually mostly understand each other when everybody speaks slowly. The Portuguese were the first to arrive in what is now the Western Cape, where the found the Khoi and the San people. Then Dutch settled the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Later, other Europeans fleeing religious persecution moved here (mainly the French Hugonots). Slaves were brought in from other Dutch colonies, mainly Malaysia. The "lower class people" started speaking a kreole of these languages, called "kitchen Dutch" by the "upper class." The isiXhoza people had gotten into the mix also as the settles started moving inland. Then, the English invaded and later brought Slaves from India and other English colonies. "Kitchen Dutch" was rebranded as Afrikaans but was illegal as the English wanted to enforce "English only" laws.
interestingly some of those words in Swiss German are more similar to Dutch than to Standard German. And trekker (or Trecker) is also used in many German regions for traktor.
Quite often you don't immediately recognize the same origin in words between English, Dutch and German. Certain consonant shifts have moved standard German and modern English in different directions whereas low-German, Dutch, Limburgish and the other variants of Flemish and Afrikaans are more closely linked (low saxon and low franconian = platt ). Take a word like glauben in standard German, believe in English, geloven in Dutch which is sort if in the middle whereas glauben and believe are too far away the recognize the common origin. Sometimes we have the same or almost the same words in German like in Dutch but they are more locally used in Northern Germany whereas the standard German word is of middle German or southern German origin: begrijpen - begreifen - verstehen, belangrijk - belangreich - wichtig.
I didn’t think English was that different. There were loads of similarities :)
A lot of Afrikaners spent their holidays here in my Dutch neck of the woods. It is always funny to hear Afrikaans in the streets. The area where i life right between Germany and the Netherlands has another Germanic languages, Nether Saxon. Which sounds pretty much as you would expect, a mix of Dutch and German.
The words used by the German speaker are “too” Standard German for my taste. It leaves out the broadness of grammar and word choices we have. Instead of “Krankenhaus” for “Hospital” you can also say “Spital”, instead of “tschüss” people here say “ciao”. And as for the surprise with “yellow”: it’s actually the same as the others, all you gotta do is undo the “High German Consonant Shift”. Look it up on Wikipedia. Yes, “Arbeit” sounds different from “work”, but German also has “Werk”, it’s just that the context is only so slightly different: “werken” is “to manufacture” or “to create”, the piece you work on is “das Werkstück”, the “product” is “das Werk”, the place you produce your “Werk” is a “Werkstatt”. And, and, and…
I mean, I can only speak for German, but depending on the dialect you might be a lot closer to dutch or very different. Like for examlple yes, Käse is the 'high German' word for cheese, but it's also called Kas (pronounced kaas) a lot where I'm from.
As @tenkoman said, I grew up in a small village near Neuss/Duesseldorf and learned Flat German as a child. I live like 35 Minutes away from the dutch border and due to me understanding a few flat german dialects, I can understand a big part of dutch too. I think if you are good in english and flat german, you can understand dutch pretty good. Its always like a mix of both of those languages. For example : Begreifen -> High German = to understand Bejriefe -> Western Flat German Begrijp -> Dutch Was -> High German = what Wat -> Flat German Wat-> Dutch Tanz -> HIgh German = the dance Danz -> Western Flat German Dans -> Dutch There are pretty many similarities in durch and flat german. The word Tractor they used in the video, the afrikaans word Trekker, is a word to describe a Tractor in Western Germany as well. Pretty funny how languages are connected. Afrikaans is based on dutch anyways due to the dutch colonys getting their land in the world :D
You could well include two more west germanic languages: Plattdeuts and (West) Frisian. The overall effect would be even more stunning. Or you could make the respective language inventories of let s say 1790 the base of the comparison. You d get german "Ross" for english "horse" and supposedly more like that. Btw: The english "hound" is a special case (or under-class) in the broader class "dog". Vice versa: The german "Dogge" is an under-class in the broader class "Hund". What a fascinating mix-up.
Piesang in Afrikaans means banana, same as in the Indonesian country because of slavery... Alot of words in Afrikaans are taken or borrowed (variared) from French, Portuguese, Malaysia, etc. Afrikaans is influenced by 13 other languages.
As seeing this out of switzerland, i'd like to see a dialect from us included
I read somewhere that while a large portion of the English language has West Germanic vocabulary, it's grammar & sentence structure is strongly reminiscent of *North* Germanic languages... & of course there's the pre-existing *Latin* influence (Prior to the Saxon migration) and the later *Norman French* [aka Norwegian // French hybrid] domination to muddy the waters further. And then you get a couple of outliers: e.g. "I had told them that I had had enough of their idiocy." & *...* a village in the UK: _Torpenhow Hill_ [2 words from a total of 4 languages: *Tor* {Olde English}, *pen* {Welsh}, *how* or haugh {Danish} & *Hill* {modern English}. Each of which in modern English would translate to Hill, so it becomes *Hill-hill-hill Hill* .... Some have suggested that there is no such hill, but there definitely is a village *_Torpenhow_*
I remember when i learned that shark means Hiu in bahasa Indonesia and we in germany (like stated in the video)say Hai. I wondered how it comes that the word is so similar because both countrys encountered sharks by themself. So there is no need to adapt the word from each other.
6:12 Funny - in this case, english is much more near french language: bicyclette = bicycle. The english word "bycycle" is a compound describing the look of the item (bi = two, cycle = sth going round (the wheels)) ..... and the german word "Fahrrad" is a compound decribing the usage of the item: Fahr = drive ... rad = wheel
1:13 broke me. The "ch" in german words differ, in pronounciation. For example "Chlor" or "Chlorene" in english, is spoken like a "K" in the beginning. In the german word "fechten" which is "fencing" in english, the "ch" is spoken like a cat is hissing in you but shorter. Anyway... the german dude refused to speak out the word because it would sound like the english word for s**. No one ever in the history of german language said "secchhhhhhhhsssss* Thanks for the attention, good night!
the best langurage similarity is with the pensilvania dutch they still use alot of my home german dialect and made some words up in that langurage that did not exist when they left germany
Before watching. Born Dutch, grew up in South Africa, got all my education in English and it's the language I've used most in my live, living in Austria (German speaking) right now. This is gonna be funny. Edit: On the similarities between Dutch and Afrikaans, as a 6 year old raised Dutch and English, I understood everything when I came there. It's a mix with more Dutch than English, without grammar and some strange words from local languages or trade, like the bananas/piesang. Learning German at a later age, it was more like learning a new dialect than a new language. Frisian is the 5th west Germanic language, which is easy to understand for me, even the north Germanic languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are pretty familiar. And as you've noticed, English is the odd ball in the language family. With the size and influence the British have had, a lot of foreign loan words creeped into the language. And the worldwide use simplified it's grammar as well.
Very interesting. I'm German, and watching TV or overhearing a conversation in Dutch at normal speed lets me catch maybe one word in ten. When reading and sounding words out, it's six in ten at best. However, when presented as slowly and clearly as in this video, it's not hard to recognize that a word like German "arbeiten" -- which seems to be an outlier versus English "work", and "werk" in Dutch/Afrikaans -- but if you're a native speaker like me, you just might know that "werken" is an outdated synonym for "arbeiten", and can easily make the connection that seems impossible on the surface.
The written German or Hight German, is a pretty young language. The northern half of Germany spoke an Anglo-Saxon dialect, which was closer to English than to German as we know it today. in the south of Germany there were diverse dialects, many of which have disappeared, which have more similarities with the other Germanic languages than High German. For example, in Afrikaans you can recognize many German words that we somehow know but are no longer in use.
and, yes, the scottish word for cow and the german word Kuh are quite similar in pronunciation
i'd like to see something like this for German/Austrian/Swiss dialects aswell... since Austrian German is my native tongue i actually feel like the Dutch pronunciation is often closer to what i'd say than the "German" one.
1:11 Usually the number 'six' in German - sechs - is spoken like ~zags~. That´s because in spoken German the 'ch' often sounds like a 'g' or a 'k'.
It's correct as some have written over here already, it depends where you are from in Germany to understand Germany. Im personally from the federal district of Saxony (so a former eastern part of Germany and pretty far away dialectially from the netherlands) and I was once working for a dutch company, but I would say even without any clue of the dutch language I was able to understand around 60% of the sentenses my coworkers were say e.g. on the phone if they spoke slowly (consider 50% to be able to understand the maincontext of a sentense). So I doubt that that you need to know lower german (plattdeutsch) to understand the dutch (sure it would help but I would say its not necessary). I would go further and consider the dutch the closest to be understandable to German language. In comparisson to e.g. danish or swedish wereI would say I don't get the maincontext of the sentense. I would also say that if you are from a upper german speaking region (souther Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you may have bigger problems to understand out dutch neighbors.
There is a more poetic word for horse in German, too: "das Ross" - this one is related to the English horse. The initial r is spirited, and pretty often inversions happen between spirits and frikative sounds. You come from "Ross" to "horse" effortlessly.
my experience was!yes we both spoke slow and correct in our language.we understand not every word but we know.
And with Dutch being a sub-group of one (frisian) of the original five main germanic groups.... it makes sense that it is close to german. What is always interesting is the bigger numbers are spoken back to front, like 21 is "ein und zwanzig" (one twenty) in german, similar also in dutch and afrikaans. But in english it is "twenty one" .
Twenty one is modern, Jane Austen wrote one and twenty.
Mahlzeit
My mother tongue is Afrikaans. If someone speaks Dutch to me, and they go quite slowly and pronounce each word crisply and clearly, I'll understand all of it. If a German speaks German to me, that would be a bit more difficult, but the same applies-if the pronunciation is clear and crisp, and the speech is quite slow, I should get it. Mind you, I had German as a school subject, so that helps. Written Dutch and German don't present much of a problem. I can read those languages; Dutch quite easily, and German slowly and painstakingly.
It would be nice to include Dialects as well as other Germanic languages, but then the target audience would probably be a handful of linguists.
The evolution of swiss german is really interesting. If you travel from the north of germany to the south of switzerland you see how the dialects evolving from the last one. Until Zurich I would say germans can learn to understand the language kinda fast. But its also insane how different the languages of the german side and the swiss side of the Rhein are! at some point of the history this two sides changed their language completly different. When the Alps and other mountain formations beginns the dialects are getting uniquer. It peaks In the kantons of valais and grisons where the exchanges with the other regions were always complicated because of the hard winters and roads of the alps. And I think the french evolution in switzerland had a same nice story! The region around the kanton Bern has also so much influence of french too. Swissgerman in generell has a more french words then you maybe think. The language history of switzerland is incredible! just because of geography of the country
I‘m Dutch and I have some Afrikaans speaking colleagues. Reading for me is no problem but sometimes the pronunciation is tricky for me. But overall I can understand Afrikaans quite well and vice versa.
Afrocaans is a douther Langurage of Dutch. And i like the Dutch i have a dutch Freund who speakes Not only dutch but also English German and Russian so for me it is always interesting to See Word we bourowed from each other.
The Dutch speaker was clearly not from the south of the Netherlands. She pronounces the v as an f in a lot of words. In my youth we used to watch a lot of German television here in the South. The comprehension and speaking of the German language used to be high. Nowadays, the influence of English (UK/USA) is much greater. In the part of the Netherlands closer to the German border German will still be well understood and spoken. Understanding Afrikaans is generally not really a problem, just takes some time to get into it. Speaking is something completely different. For example spreken and praten are speaking and talking. So basically in Dutch we say I speak English, in Afrikaans it's apparently I talk English. Easy to understand, harder to speak.