How Similar are German and Dutch?

hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul today we'll be answering the question how similar are German and Dutch wait what were those two languages again german dutch dutch nederlands flumps Dutch isn't it strange that English speakers call the language of the Netherlands and Flanders Dutch while German speakers call their own language Deutsch why is that it's because there's a connection between Dutch and German both are Germanic the English word Dutch used to refer to continental Germanic peoples in general but then came to refer to only the people of the Netherlands because of greater contact and rivalry with them in particular the English word comes from the middle dutch word du CH and in modern Dutch Dutch which means German and this is a cognate of the German word Dutch and with that we've already begun comparing the two languages in Dutch they say Dutch and in German they say Dutch Germanic and Dutch are both members of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family both developed from the same root the same ancestor language proto-germanic which developed into western eastern and northern dialect groups the western dialects are the ancestors of Dutch and German and the other West Germanic languages one thing we have to keep in mind when comparing Dutch and German is that there are many dialects of Dutch and there are many dialects of German and in northern Germany and parts of Netherlands there are dialects that arguably form another language low German or low Saxon and there's another regional language called Frisian but speakers of all of these dialects learn either standard Dutch or standard German depending on which country they live in so there may be cases when German and Dutch speakers understand each other more easily when their dialects are closer to each other but there are other situations in which their dialects are further apart and it would be easiest to communicate in the standard languages in this video I'll focus on standard Dutch and standard German vocabulary Dutch and Germans share a large amount of cognate vocabulary according to one source I've seen their lexical similarity is around 84 percent which is slightly lower than Spanish and Italian or Spanish and Portuguese 84% lexical similarity doesn't mean that 84% of the words are exactly the same it means that they are cognates they come from a common origin but they may have a different form or be pronounced differently some examples the word for glass in German nos and in Dutch plus the word for water in German masa and in Dutch latter the word for dog hunt hint the word for brother Budda Budda but this here is actually an archaic form of the word the modern form of the word is lure the word for sister semester sister this is also an archaic form the modern form is just and here are a couple of phrases good morning guten morgen guten morgen a good day or good afternoon guten tag who da da it's sunny it's sunny the dish Zuma's there are a lot of cognates like that but there are false cognates as well in Dutch je means sea and mere means lake in German Zi means lake and mia means sea but there's actually a bit more to it than that there's actually a masculine word desi meaning lake and a feminine word Deezy meaning sea in Dutch Leeson means to lie as in to tell a lie in German Leegin means to lie as in to lie down on a bed for example in Dutch listen means to lie on something like a bed in German lugan means to tell a lie in Dutch pain 'let means painful but in German kindness normally means embarrassing in Dutch motion means be allowed to and in German Mugen means to like but hold on a second the Dutch word can also be used with the meaning to like specifically when you like a person the German word is used more generally for people or things you like so even though a lot of cognates may be obvious or easy to decipher as zooming that they mean the same thing might cause some confusion pronunciation I'm sure you noticed that most of those cognate words sounded a little different and some of them sounded quite different one of the biggest differences between Dutch and German is the different sounds in either language and how these results in cognate words that sound different some of the differences between Dutch and German are a result of the High German consonant shift which took place in the few hundred years leading up to the ninth century German descent from dialects that were affected by these changes while Dutch descends from dialects that were not affected by these changes because of the shift voiceless stops putas and cut in Dutch tend to be fricatives fossa and huh in German cognates when between vowels or after a vowel at the end of a word for example the words meaning shift in Dutch skip and in German shoes and the words meaning water in Dutch batter and in German masa and the pronoun meaning I in Dutch ik and in German II these same voiceless stops became affricates fuh-fuh or cup at the beginning of a word or if they were doubled consonants or if they came after an L or R sound for example the words for Apple in Dutch okay and in German that's a and the words meaning heart in Dutch heart and in German that's the third change cook changing to occurred only in upper German dialects and not in standard German another shift also took place in the voiced stops but duh and go which became voiceless ha ha and cut but with only the duct a tough shift taking place in standard German the other changes only took place in Upper German dialects for example the word for day in Dutch das and in German tack remember before when I said that certain German speakers would have an easier time understanding Dutch because of their dialects well that's especially true for low German dialects because like Dutch they didn't undergo this high Germanic consonant shift there was another sound change that affected high german but also low German and Dutch and the became duh this explains why German still has a sound even though there was an earlier shift from dota there are also other sound differences that are not a result of the high Germanic consonant shift notice the different G sounds in the word for God in Dutch halt and in German good the German gut is more or less like the English gut the Dutch sound varies depending on the region but is a velar or uvular fricative you may have also noticed that the W sounded different in the words for water so let's hear those again in Dutch latter and in German Massa the German sound is similar to the V sound in English the Dutch W is pronounced differently in the beginning or in the middle of the word it's sort of between of and a what sound but at the end of a word after a vowel it's a glide just like W in English our sounds are sounds very quite a lot in either language depending on where the speakers from but they're often different in either language for example the word for year in Dutch yar and in German yeah in the Dutch word the final R sounds like a retroflex approximate rah like in some varieties of English but other speakers say it as a trill dar and when it's not at the end of the word the trill dar is more consistently used especially in northern areas and in the German word the R is pronounced as a vowel it's also pronounced as a vowel in some other contexts like between vowels or after a long vowel and before another consonant in other contexts it's more like a voiced uvular fricative haha at least in a standard accent of germany here's another example using the words meaning rough in Dutch whoo here you can clearly hear the trill dar and in German so some consonants are spelled the same but sound different some are spelled differently and sound different and others are spelled differently but sound the same one example is that is spelled as Zed in Dutch but as s in German German s is also pronounced so at the end of a word or four consonants other than L and nasals two words we saw earlier are German Zuni and Dutch Zoomer there are many differences in vowels as well some are spelled differently but sound basically the same like the words meaning year that we saw a minute ago let's hear those again and focus on the vowel in Dutch yarr and in German yeah notice that the vowel is spelled differently another example the words meaning good in Dutch hoot and in German good there are also a lot of pairs of cognates in which the vowel sounds have become different and that is reflected in their spelling for example the words for dream in Dutch bloom and in German home a long oval in Dutch often corresponds with this diphthong in German the words meaning body but cognate with the English word life in Dutch life and in German light these dipthongs often correspond with each other another similar example is the word for bite in Dutch baton and in German bison also notice this German letter that represents the sound after long vowels or diphthongs as opposed to SS after short vowels this orthographic symbol doesn't exist in Dutch in Dutch so is always represented by a single s and it's worth noting that this symbol is not used in Swiss standard German either they always write it as a SS grammar there are some important similarities and some important differences between the grammar of the two languages one difference is their use of grammatical gender German has three genders masculine feminine and neuter which applied to nouns their articles and adjectives that modified them Dutch historically had the same three genders but in practice in modern Dutch masculine and feminine essentially form a single common gender so the only grammatical distinction is between common gender and neuter and related to that German has three definite articles while Dutch has two and four indefinite articles German has just two and Dutch has just one another difference is that German has known cases different forms of nouns depending on their function in the sentence the four cases in German are nominative genitive dative and accusative Dutch used to have noun cases but they fell out of use in the spoken language and in the 1940s they were dropped from the standard language now they appear in some older idioms but that's about it that lack of noun cases arguably makes Dutch easier to learn than German at least in that particular way oh and remember a minute ago when I said that German has three definite articles well it's actually not that simple each definite article has some variations depending on the nouns case let's look at the nominative and accusative cases just to illustrate these sentences mean the red fish is expensive in German the hota fish is toya and in Dutch the rodas this is dude as you can see these sentences can be translated word-for-word from English the function of the phrases meaning the red fish is nominative because that's the subject of either sentence these sentences mean I like the red fish in German he's marked in houghton fish and in Dutch a cow from the Lodha fish hear the phrases meaning the red fish or the direct object which means their function is accusative you can see that in Dutch the noun phrase stays the same despite its accusative function in the sentence but in German the accusative form is different the noun itself doesn't have a special ending that's different depending on the gender in the case but the definite article changes and the adjective has a special ending when you consider the different case forms for nouns articles and adjectives there are a lot of possible combinations these are for definite noun phrases and these are for indefinite noun phrases learning the different case forms is a challenge for learners of German but if you learn Dutch you don't have to memorize all those different forms and endings which affect nouns adjectives articles and possessives etc word order in the sentence we just saw the word order was essentially the same in both languages and both were the same as in English in the following sentences they share the same syntax but they're different from English these sentences mean I can play the piano very well German estancia good Clavius peanin and in Dutch it commutes beyond Oh Salem word for word both sentences are I can very good piano play in both sentences the conjugated verb an auxilary verb comes second after the subject both languages feature v2 word order and in both languages the unconjugated verb moves to the end for clarity let's simplify those previous sentences by removing the adverb phrase so now they mean I can play the piano in German each tank knavish Pilon and in Dutch it campeones Pelham now let's add something so that they mean I want to be able to play the piano in German ich mr. clavier spielen cunnin word-for-word it's I want piano play be able to and in Dutch equal piano Kunis Palin word-for-word it's I want piano be able to play in Dutch when another auxiliary verb is added this auxiliary verb to knee gets moved back but the main lexical verb is still at the end in German the equivalent auxiliary verb gets moved to the end after the lexical verb this same difference occurs in relative clauses these sentences mean he knows that I can play the piano in German and vice Despina VHB Lincoln word-for-word it's he knows that I piano play can and in Dutch hi vaids don't take piano comes failing word-for-word it he knows that I piano can play so while the word order is generally similar there are some differences in the details like that let's look at one more final sentence and see what we find let's compare two sentences meaning if I had enough money I'd buy a car first in Dutch also exclusion so we can auto copan word-for-word it's if I enough money had would I a car buy next in German Venice canoe Caqueta Verdi ich mir ein how talk often what forward it's if I enough money had would I myself a car by these are both conditional sentences with two clauses and if Klaus and the main clause first you might notice that even though I said both languages have v2 word order neither of these sentences seem to have verbs in the second position in the first clause the verb comes last and in the second clause the verb comes first well this here is the main clause or independent clause so we should focus on this when thinking about v2 word order if this clause alone were the entire sentence then the subject would come first and the verb would come second making it v2 word order this here is the dependent clause in other words it's not a sentence by itself it only adds information to the main clause so this whole dependent clause occupies the first position and in the main clause the verb moves before the subject to occupy second position making it v2 word order first we can see that the words for if are different then we have the slightly different cognates meaning I hear we have cognate words meaning enough notice that the vowels sound the same but are spelled differently and notice that the letter G looks the same but sounds different in Dutch the G sounds are uvular fricative ha next we have the cognate words for money the next word is an important one in Dutch this if Clause simply has the past tense form of the verb hebben meaning to have in German however this is a subjunctive verb form something that Dutch doesn't have subjunctive forms are used to express hypothetical situations express doubt or express something you wish were true next we see the auxiliary verbs in the main clause which both translate as would the German word is the past subjunctive form of Vanden and the Dutch word is the past tense of zulan which by the way is a cognate of the English word shall notice that in German there's an extra word here this word is a reflexive pronoun which is used to show that you are buying something for yourself this is the dative form of the first person singular pronoun this is not completely necessary but is commonly used in this context in standard Dutch the reflexive pronoun is not used here next we have the indefinite articles which are cognates the German one though is the neuter accusative form while in Dutch there's only one form of the indefinite article next the word for car is similar the Dutch word is in the common gender in other words historically masculine or feminine the German word is neuter gender and in the accusative form but this form takes no special ending to distinguish it for some genders in cases it does and for others it doesn't finally we see the word for by köppen in Dutch Kelvin in German the German consonant sound foe is a result of the high Germanic consonant shift that we talked about earlier and also noticed the different vowel sound there are a lot of similarities between those two sentences we just looked at but there are also a lot of differences probably enough for you to realize that to a large extent German and Dutch are not mutually intelligible for people who haven't been exposed to the other very much words in isolation or short phrases might be mutually intelligible but when mixed in with different words and when spoken at full speed it becomes much harder and just like with other pairs of closely related languages speakers of Dutch and German often say that they can understand the other language much more in its written form than in its spoken form and like I said earlier in the video speakers of certain dialects might have a much easier time understanding the other language the question of the day for native speakers of Dutch or German how well do you understand the other language and if you've ever studied the other language what was your experience like and for other people after seeing the examples in this video what's your impression of Dutch and German do they seem very similar to you be sure to follow Lange focus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and once again thank you to all of my patreon supporters especially these amazing people right here on this screen they are my top tier patreon supporters so many many special thanks to them and to everyone else thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music]

Channel: Langfocus

Views: 1,601,185

Rating: 4.9319344 out of 5

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, phrases, linguist, linguistics, phonology, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, German language, Dutch language, Deutsch, Duits, Nederlands, Germany, Netherlands, Holland, German Dutch comparison, Are German and Dutch the same?, German Dutch difference, Germanic languages, Flanders, Belgium, Low German, Low Saxon, German Dutch pronunciation, Austria, Standard German, Standard Dutch

Id: AWVKzdyWRps

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/JOX3X]

Interessant-Interessant-Interesting ,,,,,😃

[u/[deleted]]

One lives in the swamp and the other in the woods.

[u/roempie12]

German is just a drunk variation of dutch