| quote | Originally posted by rogergarrison:
Isnt Dutch a form of German. I hear a lot of similarity.....? |
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There are similarities (there are dialects of German that are quite close to Dutch) but while I can more or less understand what an article written in Dutch is about, I can't understand a person speaking Dutch at all.
Both are West Germanic languages but the difference between the two languages are of the same order of magnitude as between French and Spanish.
There are some characteristic sound shifts:
German T becomes D in Dutch: Tier/Dier (animal).
German CH becomes K in Dutch: Auch/Ook (too)
German IE becomes E in Dutch: Viel/veel (many)
G in German is pronounced as in Good, while in Dutch it's pronounced as the Greek letter Chi. To be fair, in Flamish (Belgian dialect of Dutch), G is somewhat softer, more like H. You might say that the Flamish speak like angry cats while the Dutch speak like angry cats with bronchitis.
The Dutch grammar is simpler than the German ones, having only rudimentary cases (German has four cases).
[This message has been edited by yellowstone (edited 05-13-2014).]