wanna learn!

Haha, happily it's my first language as well.

Haha, what a stupid nonsense!

 

It's true that most dutch people "dislike" the germans for winning the worldcup final in '74 but i don't believe we deny our genetic superiority

Ofcourse there are influences of neighbouring languages (and countries that occupied us for a long period) in the dutch language but i truly believe that they just added to what we already had instead of being a major part of the language.

If foreign influences had the effect that you describe we would have had a European language centuries ago..

 

Well, it takes ages for a language to become Uni-form. How many "peoples" spoke the modern and uniform french before the french made their national education system on the region that is accepted as "french"? Language was/is a key element in creating the culture and so it's homogenity was guaranteed by the major European powers of the time (18th century). Even today, the western and southern french dialects are told to be way difficult to understand.
In german they have the term "hoch deutsch" (the Holstein, Berlin dialect, In turkish it is the Istanbul dialect).

About the single language claim you mention there would have been:
I think there are roughly 4 langauge groups in Europe

the 2 major ones are:

1) the latin (romance lang. group)

Italian
Spanis
Portuguese
French

2) the germanic lang. group

Swedish (norway,danmark&sweden)
German
English

3) the Finnish, Turkish and Hungarian lang group.

4) and lastly the Cyrillic group:
Russian, polish greek and etc.


I'm not an expert and ý dont deny that there is a seperate Dutch language with its different grammer, rules and etc. but it's just that they are too "relative" to each other

I mean I know a little german and if you count till 10 in dutch I'd understand it

(I alsro tried to learn dutch from the net, but I'm just a lazy mf)

 

Of course german, english and dutch are very relative to each other. But to say that dutch is 50% german and 50% english just is very incorrect.
I hear a lot of similarities in the german language as well, but the grammar is just as different from the dutch language as french or even turkish.

 

well, of course nobody can explain a language as if it was a chemical mixture
"%40 english, 10% french 45%percent this and a tint of that"
I was just emphasizing the similarities by way of exaggeration.

but when you suddently see the "achteburgwaal" plate in amsterdam
u know that it is the "eighth burg wall".

 

First of all it's the 'achterburgwal'.. and no, that doesn't translate like 'eight burg wall', since 'achter' means 'behind'... if it was 'waal' then it would refer to the river 'waal' here..

I agree with one of the above posters that Dutch is influenced by a lot of languages (which language isn't? Even something 'alien' like Japanese has a lot in common with eg. Chinese)... but that in the end it's a language with it's complete own grammer (more exeptions than rules) and words as well. And what to think of the very distinct pronouncation?

Yeah.. we've got a distinct language allright.. although it is influenced by and has similarities with other languages.

 

funny how most of our words arent german, nor english. and why is it that people think we still hate germans or whatever? we dont, only people in other countries think that. we used to have Diets here in the middle-ages, hence the word Dutch. Anyway that was a sort of German, but it grew out to be a whole new language. Dutch is German, nor English. Frisian has a lot of similarities with old english though, but then again i speak Dutch fluently, but i dont understand Frisian.

 

they dont speak Swedish in Norway, nor do they speak Swedish in Denmark

 

Only Danish is slightly different than Swedish but it's still a dialect of Swedish or the Nordic language as a whole. I got friends from all three countries who speak thier local languages and understand each other perfectly. And the main reason why Swedish is the second lang. in Finland is that Sweden used to be the greatest imperial power in the region.
So they both have organic and politic ties with the Nordic language

 

I do, I'm afraid. My father is frisian and I always lived in Friesland. It has also a lot of similarities with the swedish language, so I've heard.

 

Well, I'm pretty sure that the Norwegian language is at least as different from Swedish as the Danish language. And surely Danish can't be seen as a dialect of the Swedish language. It's quite different.

 

Still its not the same. Danish is another language, not a dialect. I can understand Danish, with a little effort, but not Swedish. Ive read both, and theyre different.

 

Any helpful phrases for a visit to A'dam?

 

Swedish is a member of the Indo-European family, to which almost all European languages belong (with the exception of the Finnish-Ugrian, Basque, and Caucasian languages), and has many features in common with all of these. Its closest relatives are Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. The latter has due to its isolation remained remarkably intact from the Viking Age and therefore is very difficult to understand for other Nordic speakers.
Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes usually do not have any difficulties in communicating with each other. Even though Danish is slightly more closely related to Swedish than Norwegian, its "hot-potato-in-the-mouth" pronunciation is the main obstacle when Danes and Swedes speak with each other, whereas Norwegian in that respect is very similar to Swedish.

All in all, the differences between the languages are not very big - most Swedes would probably even find it difficult to tell whether a text was written in Norwegian or Danish. Since Swedish also is the second official language of Finland, a basic knowledge of Swedish will thus enable you to understand and make yourself understood in several countries.

Quoted fom the site: http://web.hhs.se/isa/swedish/

 

When someone speaks German, or Danish, i dont have much problems understanding them. Does that mean Dutch, German, and Danish are the same? Just grab 3 books and see so for yourself.

 

*completely agrees*

I studied Latin in highschool and I can understand the main point from an Italian, Spanish and Portugese text because of that.. that doesn't mean that those languages are the same.. they have things in common, yes.. but so do a lot of languages.. Dutch is a separate language, just like German, Danish, Italian etc etc.. although there are similarities, but that doesn't make'm the same..
I don't really see what's so difficult to understand here..

 

Nobody said that Dutch isn't a seperate language. It's has its own grammer, words and etc. But has very much in common with english and german. It's normal for Dutch to have more in common with german bcuz of geographic closeness and land ties.

About spanish,french, italian and latin: They form the Romance Language family.
If Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are brothers, then one may say spanish,french and italian are cousins, so are dutch english and german.

 

Found this on a website.. (http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_indoeuro.html)


Celtic Branch
Welsh : Irish Gaelic : Scottish Gaelic : Breton
Cornish : Gaulish : Cumbrian : Manx : Galatian

Germanic Branch
English : Dutch : Flemish : Frisian : Afrikaans
German : Yiddish : Danish : Swedish : Norwegian
Faroes : Icelandic
Anglo Saxon : Old Norse : Frankish : Gothic
Lombardo : Visigoth : Vandal

Romance (Latin) Branch
Italian : Sardinian : French : Provencal : Catalonian
Spanish : Ladino : Galician : Portuguese : Romansh
Romanian : Moldavian
Latin : Oscan : Umbrian : Faliscan : Sabine : Dalmatian

Slavic Branch
Russian : Belorussian : Ukrainian : Polish : Sorbian
Czech : Slovak : Slovene : Croatian : Serbian
Kashubian : Bulgarian : Macedonian : Bosnian
Old Church Slavic

Baltic Branch
Lithuanian : Latvian
Prussian

Hellenic Branch
Modern Greek
Mycenaean : Koine : Byzantine Greek
Classical Greek (Attic : Doric, Ionic, Aeolic)

Illyric Branch
Albanian

Anatolian Branch
Hittite : Lydian : Lycian: Luwian : Palaic

Thracian Branch
Armenian
Thracian : Phrygian

Iranian Branch
Farsi : Kurdish : Pashto : Baluchi : Ossetian : Tadzhik
Persian : Avestan : Scythian

Indic Branch
Hindi : Urdu : Nepali : Bengali : Assamese : Oriya
Kashmiri : Punjabi : Sindhi : Marathi : Gujerati
Bhili : Lahnda : Maithili : Magahi
Konkani : Sinhalese : Maldivian : Romany
Sanskrit : Pali Tokharian BranchTurfanian : Kuchean

 

Thanks...