• decolo@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    2 days ago

    Being around Dutch people feels like I’ve had a stroke. All the sounds are right but they don’t combine to make comprehensible language - except sometimes half an English or German sentence pops out unexpectedly.

    • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      2 days ago

      To me it’s the opposite, it’s all the wrong sounds but I end up understanding way too much of it.

      • decolo@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        Interesting perspective. I speak English primarily, and I wonder if you speak mostly German.

        Maybe Dutch is German with an American-English accent?

        • blackbeans@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 day ago

          Dutch, English and German share the same ancestor but are unique languages. Dutch people speak better English than German on the whole, except for older people.

          In fact, many English words originate directly from Dutch, such as dock, deck, freight, boss, cookie, coleslaw, sleigh, yacht, skipper and so on. Mainly because the Dutch were very active as sea traders and colonists.

          The Dutch mock the German language similarly to how the Germans mock the Dutch language, emphasizing how harsh it sounds, how loud and incomprehensible some Germans talk and how the Germans invent their own long words for everything even if there’s already a perfectly usable English word for it.

  • blackbeans@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 days ago

    Can relate but it’s not a surprise, all three languages derive from Germanic and many words in English have originated or are borrowed from Dutch or German.