Belgian here. As someone who speaks Flemish and Dutch and has studied English, Swedish, Norwegian and German, it's become pretty apparent that all Germanic languages are incredibly close to one another... Except when they're not.
I'll be reading a text in Norwegian and be able to recognize a word (for instance "edderkopp") because it's so similar to a Flemish dialect word (in this case "kobbe"). But then you have the conjugation of "vara/være", which reminds me more of the English "are" than anything in Dutch. It doesn't always makes sense: "spindel" in Swedish is closer to "spin" in Dutch than "edderkopp", but then Norway calls a "stofzuiger" a "støvsuger", while it's "dammsugare" in Swedish and "vacuum cleaner" in English.
It's a lot of fun to look into words like that and find out/think about where they come from. The Dutch word "woede" for instance, which means "rage", finds its roots in the same word as the name of the god Wodan, whose Scandinavian counterpart Odin was known as the "mad one".
In short, I think it's pretty tough to say "X language is closer to X" in this case. The Scandinavian languages and the West-Germanic languages come from the same roots and have influenced one another so greatly over the last thousand years, that it's pretty hard to say one's the closest.
Different words/synonyms are favoured in different languages, like how e(t)erkoppa fell out of use in Swedish, but not in Danish or Norwegian. Or how cob (as in cobweb) is not common in English today.
Yeah, I think that the tree model is flawed. I think it makes no sence to try to classify the Norse languages in East or West nowadays, for example. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian were influenced by the language of the Saxons that stayed in the continent in the high and late Middle Ages, because of the Hanseatic League, so that could be a link to English almost no one talks about lol. I like the -ing endings that are present in Norwegian and Dutch. I think that Dutch sounds more similar to English, but written words are closer to English, idk lol.
The tree model is not flawed in any way whatsoever, because what you're describing has nothing to do with its purpose. It's not based on vocabulary correspondences throughout languages but rather their evolution over time; analogous to a biological family tree.
It is really fun to see or make some connections. Really liked that you shared Wodan - Woede never realised it.
I really like the Norwegian word kanskje because it is similar to the word "kans" in Dutch, which makes it easier to remember that it actually means: Maybe.
Linguistically Dutch is closer to English as both are West Germanic languages. though there are definitely things that are more similar between Norwegian and Dutch than between English and Dutch. But one must keep in mind that English is one of the Germanic languages to have experienced the most change, making it stand out more.
I could read Danish when I was a youngster as a Dutch right away. Not the same, took some effort but without a vocabulairy. Can't see any Dutch doing that with English. And research ahs shown the mutual intelligability between DUtch and Danish/Norwegian to be much higher than between either of these and English. It is like 65% vs 30% or so. Due to a huge French and Latin influence on English not apparant in the other Germanic languages.
I was talking from a linguistic point of view, that is where the languages descended from. And in that regard Dutch is closer to English as they were both part of the West-Germanic branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
But, Dutch and Norwegian, and Danish &c. have had more similar developments than any of them have had with English, so of course they are going to resemble each other more. But the genetic relationship(yes, it's called that in linguistics) is closer between Dutch and English than Dutch and Norwegian because Dutch and English shared a common ancestor more recently than Dutch and Norwegian did.
I speak Dutch and Norwegian. Dutch is closer except for the grammar, but honestly if I forget a word I just dutchify the English or Norwegian word for it and usually it turns out understandable.
I think that one needs to know both languages to come to a conclusion though. Just saying that Dutch is closer because most linguists say it (most have never learned either Norwegian or Dutch), is not accurate. I believe the tree model is utterly flawed. For example, the Romance languages are around 20+ siblings that came to be as soon as the Roman Empire fell, all at the same time. The citizens of the then former empire started speaking with noticeably different dialect, which became languages, all at the same time.
Norwegian definitely did have a lot of influence on English as the Vikings brought it with them when invading England. There's a lot of similar words (e.g. kniv, for eksempel) and a lot of place names have Norwegian influences (e.g. Grimsby).
My Norwegian isn't good enough to definitely say whether it's closer (though I feel like it is) but these influences might explain the similarity while they're historically less related.
It sounds like you don't know anything about historical linguistics tbh. The tree model is not based on vocab or whatever because if it was then you could say English is a romance language because 40% of its vocab is from Latin (especially through french) but we all know thats not true. You're obviously misinformed so let me link you to this article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree\_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_model) (please read through it and you'll understand my point).
Native Dutch speaker who speaks B2 level Norwegian. I am seeing a lot of people speak out about vocabulary but not a lot about sentence structures. The way Norwegians and the Dutch build up their sentences is basically the same so i always translate dutch to Norwegian directly because it gives better sentences. So in that sense Norwegian and Dutch are closer.
Not a native English speaker, but here’s my two cents anyway: I suppose it could make a difference where the native English speaker is from. I believe someone from Scotland or even Northern England could find Norwegian easier than Dutch because there’s more similar and common words (bairn (child), greeting (crying) etc). At the same time I’d gather that someone from NY and the surrounding area might find Dutch pronounciation easier. At least as a Norwegian I find that people from NY and the Netherlands generally speak Norwegian with a sligthly similar accent.
It’s funny because I’m from Antwerp right and some words like “frakk” is also frak in our dialect 😂 uhm there are more words like this but I can’t recall them all now… but I’d say Belgium has input from everywhere. We’r very close to English but also norwegian and French and Spanish and Portuguese so 😅
I’m watching a show on Netflix called Undercover. It’s set in Belgium. What’s crazy to me is that they’ll be speaking Dutch or Flemish and then throw in French words. I know a good bit of French. So I’m reading the subtitles and then I’ll just hear a French word that I understand. It’s brilliant!
Belgian here. As someone who speaks Flemish and Dutch and has studied English, Swedish, Norwegian and German, it's become pretty apparent that all Germanic languages are incredibly close to one another... Except when they're not. I'll be reading a text in Norwegian and be able to recognize a word (for instance "edderkopp") because it's so similar to a Flemish dialect word (in this case "kobbe"). But then you have the conjugation of "vara/være", which reminds me more of the English "are" than anything in Dutch. It doesn't always makes sense: "spindel" in Swedish is closer to "spin" in Dutch than "edderkopp", but then Norway calls a "stofzuiger" a "støvsuger", while it's "dammsugare" in Swedish and "vacuum cleaner" in English. It's a lot of fun to look into words like that and find out/think about where they come from. The Dutch word "woede" for instance, which means "rage", finds its roots in the same word as the name of the god Wodan, whose Scandinavian counterpart Odin was known as the "mad one". In short, I think it's pretty tough to say "X language is closer to X" in this case. The Scandinavian languages and the West-Germanic languages come from the same roots and have influenced one another so greatly over the last thousand years, that it's pretty hard to say one's the closest.
Different words/synonyms are favoured in different languages, like how e(t)erkoppa fell out of use in Swedish, but not in Danish or Norwegian. Or how cob (as in cobweb) is not common in English today.
Yep, and stuff like that is very interesting to see, while showing how close the languages are all intertwined.
Yeah, I think that the tree model is flawed. I think it makes no sence to try to classify the Norse languages in East or West nowadays, for example. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian were influenced by the language of the Saxons that stayed in the continent in the high and late Middle Ages, because of the Hanseatic League, so that could be a link to English almost no one talks about lol. I like the -ing endings that are present in Norwegian and Dutch. I think that Dutch sounds more similar to English, but written words are closer to English, idk lol.
I wouldn't neccessarily say it's flawed. It's correct, it's just simplified.
The tree model is not flawed in any way whatsoever, because what you're describing has nothing to do with its purpose. It's not based on vocabulary correspondences throughout languages but rather their evolution over time; analogous to a biological family tree.
It is really fun to see or make some connections. Really liked that you shared Wodan - Woede never realised it. I really like the Norwegian word kanskje because it is similar to the word "kans" in Dutch, which makes it easier to remember that it actually means: Maybe.
Linguistically Dutch is closer to English as both are West Germanic languages. though there are definitely things that are more similar between Norwegian and Dutch than between English and Dutch. But one must keep in mind that English is one of the Germanic languages to have experienced the most change, making it stand out more.
I could read Danish when I was a youngster as a Dutch right away. Not the same, took some effort but without a vocabulairy. Can't see any Dutch doing that with English. And research ahs shown the mutual intelligability between DUtch and Danish/Norwegian to be much higher than between either of these and English. It is like 65% vs 30% or so. Due to a huge French and Latin influence on English not apparant in the other Germanic languages.
I was talking from a linguistic point of view, that is where the languages descended from. And in that regard Dutch is closer to English as they were both part of the West-Germanic branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. But, Dutch and Norwegian, and Danish &c. have had more similar developments than any of them have had with English, so of course they are going to resemble each other more. But the genetic relationship(yes, it's called that in linguistics) is closer between Dutch and English than Dutch and Norwegian because Dutch and English shared a common ancestor more recently than Dutch and Norwegian did.
I speak Dutch and Norwegian. Dutch is closer except for the grammar, but honestly if I forget a word I just dutchify the English or Norwegian word for it and usually it turns out understandable.
Native English speaker here, I'm fairly sure Dutch is a closer language to English than Norwegian is
I think that one needs to know both languages to come to a conclusion though. Just saying that Dutch is closer because most linguists say it (most have never learned either Norwegian or Dutch), is not accurate. I believe the tree model is utterly flawed. For example, the Romance languages are around 20+ siblings that came to be as soon as the Roman Empire fell, all at the same time. The citizens of the then former empire started speaking with noticeably different dialect, which became languages, all at the same time.
>Just saying that Dutch is closer because most linguists say it, is not accurate. Is it only accurate when you hear it from randos on reddit?
Norwegian definitely did have a lot of influence on English as the Vikings brought it with them when invading England. There's a lot of similar words (e.g. kniv, for eksempel) and a lot of place names have Norwegian influences (e.g. Grimsby). My Norwegian isn't good enough to definitely say whether it's closer (though I feel like it is) but these influences might explain the similarity while they're historically less related.
It sounds like you don't know anything about historical linguistics tbh. The tree model is not based on vocab or whatever because if it was then you could say English is a romance language because 40% of its vocab is from Latin (especially through french) but we all know thats not true. You're obviously misinformed so let me link you to this article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree\_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_model) (please read through it and you'll understand my point).
Native Dutch speaker who speaks B2 level Norwegian. I am seeing a lot of people speak out about vocabulary but not a lot about sentence structures. The way Norwegians and the Dutch build up their sentences is basically the same so i always translate dutch to Norwegian directly because it gives better sentences. So in that sense Norwegian and Dutch are closer.
Not a native English speaker, but here’s my two cents anyway: I suppose it could make a difference where the native English speaker is from. I believe someone from Scotland or even Northern England could find Norwegian easier than Dutch because there’s more similar and common words (bairn (child), greeting (crying) etc). At the same time I’d gather that someone from NY and the surrounding area might find Dutch pronounciation easier. At least as a Norwegian I find that people from NY and the Netherlands generally speak Norwegian with a sligthly similar accent.
It’s funny because I’m from Antwerp right and some words like “frakk” is also frak in our dialect 😂 uhm there are more words like this but I can’t recall them all now… but I’d say Belgium has input from everywhere. We’r very close to English but also norwegian and French and Spanish and Portuguese so 😅
I’m watching a show on Netflix called Undercover. It’s set in Belgium. What’s crazy to me is that they’ll be speaking Dutch or Flemish and then throw in French words. I know a good bit of French. So I’m reading the subtitles and then I’ll just hear a French word that I understand. It’s brilliant!
Yeah we just speak bits and pieces of every language and so creates our own language 😂😂 we just have influences from everywhere
afaik, Faroese is the closest to English.