Dutch Language | Can English speakers understand it? | Part 1
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2024
- Can English speakers understand the Dutch language? 🤓 Watch the video and play along to find out! 😁
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📝 Contact details for the guests of the show are:
🇳🇱 💬🤓 Kim Jautze: the Dutch teacher → @learndutchwithkim
📝 website: learndutchwithkim.com
📱Instagram: @learndutchwithkim
🤓🇯🇵 Matt: the Japanese and language learning expert → @mattvsjapan
🤓🇬🇧 Simon Roper: the Old English expert → @simonroper9218
📱Instagram: @simon.roperr
🕰 Time Stamps:
0:00 - Introduction
1:45 - 1. Sentence.
3:43 - 2. Sentence.
6:57 - 3. Sentence
11:26 - 4. Sentence
15:19 - 5. Sentence
18:01 - 6. Sentence
21:54 - 7. Sentence
25:12 - 8. Sentence
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🇩🇪 German vs 🇳🇱 Dutch vs 🇧🇪 Flemish → • German vs Dutch vs Fle...
🤓 🦂 Latin Language Spoken | Can Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian speakers understand it? → • Latin Language Spoken ...
🇧🇷🇲🇽🇮🇹Brazilian Portuguese | Can Spanish and Italian speakers understand? → • Brazilian Portuguese |...
🇷🇴 🦂 Romanian vs Latin Speakers | Can they understand it? → • Romanian vs Latin Spea...
🇫🇷🇮🇹🇧🇷🇲🇽French Language | Can Italian, Spanish and Portuguese speakers understand? → • French Language | Can ...
🇮🇹🇧🇷🇲🇽Italian Language | Can Spanish and Portuguese speakers understand? → • Italian Language | Can...
Soundtrack:
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Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
🤗 Big hug to everyone reading my video descriptions! You rock! 🤓💪🏻
#dutch
German vs Dutch vs Flemish!! → czcams.com/video/5SUyI3dMASY/video.html
Cool
ah yes me too
Fleming isn't a language they speqk dutch
@@nightliferoleplay5897 Flemish is a distinct version of Dutch, next to "Hollands" dutch (I abreviate this to Hollands), such as American versus British versus Australian English. A lot of words are only known either in Flemish or Hollands. Hollands has a lot of English loan words, while Flemish is influenced by French, secondly Flemish uses a lot of brands in stead of the more general word. (f.e. in Flemish you write with a Bic (every day use) or a Parker (which is more fancy & expensive) while in Hollands you write with a balpen or balpoint ), other words are the same, but have a different meaning : f.e. Flemish "poepen" (=making love), Hallands "poepen" (= to poop).
Adding Platdeutsch would be interesting!
As a native Dutch speaker, I could understand all sentences.
😯😯😯
As a native of Noord Brabant, I was very thrown off by the harsh g-sound; I couldn't understand a word ;-)
@@misterkami2 I assume the word patat must have confused you quite a bit as wel.
Underrated comment, I'm dying
As a native flemish speaker i was also thrown very off guard by the harsh g sound
Me, watching as a dutch person: wow I'm really good at this
same- but i mostly speak english
Me too! I have all the answers right
Me too
Me too all correct Het is geweldig!
As German it is also not too difficult3
The fact that Simon didn't flex on others for knowing old English is commendable.
He is a very humble lad!
But is it Old English, or is it actually Danish?
And also that gives him an advantage that I feel the viewers should be aware of. Definitely not an average British English speaker
@@lourier3none of them is normal. Norbert knows some German + Hungarian and Spanish in addition to his Polish and English. The way Matt attacked the Japanese language is definitely also not normal. They all know a lot more about linguistics than normal people and they are all more intelligent than average.
@JanBruunAndersen It's Old English derived from West Germanic languages, but it indeed has a lot of Old Norse (derived from North Germanic languages) influences. In the end they are both Proto-Germanic languages.
I think this video really shows how much English is, in fact, a Germanic language no matter how much it tries to be a Romantic Language.
Romance language
It's Germanic, but it has words from loads of languages. English isn't trying to be a romance language, it's the most like Frisian than any other language.
Mix of both
@@blazednlovinit I guess the point was supposed to be that english, norwegian etc have too much influence from Latin (which only icelandic avoided)
Like germanic languages can't be romantic...😶
Prediction: Simon, with his knowledge of old english, is going to knock this out of the park.
Aaaaaand you were absolutely right
Ja ich habe das auch gedacht!
and he was the only one with headphones :-)
I know it
Im learning German and I'm surprised i could understand almost all written Dutsch.
In this video: Old English turns out to be a gateway drug into learning other Germanic languages
That isn't exactly strange, considering English is part-way founded from Dutch.Then again Dutch is from old German(Germanic), with many similar sounding words and verbs.
So old English is based on the Dutch language. The Dutch people has invaded England in 1688-1991 or something. So all considered it isn't that strange.
I'd say that old English is actually closer to modern Dutch than English from my extremely limited experience. In the Dutch courses near the end of high school we went into the history of the languages a bit and had to "read" some old stories in their original language. I found it incredibly hard to read, but when someone else was reading out loud it sounded a bit like a very strange Dutch dialect and I could understand most of it after adjusting to it for a few minutes (like with any strong dialect, really). I guess the combination of being a native Dutch speaker who's also fluent in English gives your brain most of the information you need to just intuitively translate much of that language.
@@Niosus that would mean I can read it pretty easily. I'm quite fluent in English and I'm Dutch. I haven't read any old English, but hearing it from Simon it really sounded quite Dutch. I have a harder time understanding the dialects of Limburg and northern Brabant, than old English.
@@gijsbertdevries9445 english was already middle/modern by those times with the french influences on top of the germanic base.
Well they all used to look/sound a lot like each other, but languages like for example Dutch and German were influenced by languages like Latin and Greek because of the Romans, but there are still similarities. So if you know those old Germanic languages, it makes it much easier to guess. (I'm not sure if everything I said is correct, this is what my German teacher told me😅)
Simon was fantastic in this one. Old English is definitely quite similar to Dutch as we have a lot of influences from the English. Fun fact: Frisian is very similar to Old English
Would love to see Simon try talking with a Frisian speaker
@@tpower1912 Samee
There's probably some influence, but I think it's just that old English simply used to be more similar to the other Germanic languages, but then diverged (it lost some words we Dutch-speakers still use in some form)
sounds like dutch has hardly evolved lol
Frisian is closer to old English than it is to Dutch IIRC. Dutch seems to be influenced by High German whereas English and Frisian stick to their ingevonic roots. Dutch pronounciations are an absolute killer for English speakers, I can only understand it when it's written.
As an English speaker (age 80) who lived one year in Groningen when I was 11, I was happily surprised to understand
all the sentences! Shows the power of early learning.
That’s amazing!
I’m 23 and afraid that I’ve missed out on my chance to take advantage of that “early learning power”. Unfortunately, I didn’t become passionate about languages until this past year. My grandmother wanted me to learn Spanish when I was a young child, and I tried to learn Latin when I was a teenager, but I couldn’t stick with either of them because I had no passion for them.
What’s attracted me to linguistics now is the concept of language families-specifically, learning about which languages are most closely related to English. It gives me this really pleasant rush of a feeling of connection when I discover cognates and other things that English has in common with the other Germanic languages, and I wish that I’d been introduced to them when I was a child, instead of the Italic languages.
I’ve been learning Swedish for two months now, because it’s the one that really attracted me, and my knowledge of Swedish helped me with guessing some things in this video that my knowledge of English didn’t help with, but I’m still afraid that it’s too late for me to develop the skills to really be fluent in other languages.
If you lived in Emden... you know the city mentioned by Shakespeare... you would be happily surprised also. 😊
@@autumnphillips151 I am 63... and still interested,... although missed early learning also.😄
@@teresasijpkens859 The first sentence is too easy for everyone from Norway / Sweden / Denmark / Germany + the englishspeaking countries. But I guess a soft start :)
Today we say "bord" in norwegian for table, but in classic norwegian "tafl". We also have "tavle" meaning the blackboard the teacher writes on ("tavla"= "the" blackboard).
We ofc anyway know the english "table".
I'm a little disappointed Simon didn't introduce himself as: Speaker of Old English
Yeah
Simon is, apparently, not a man of many words.
Also TIL Old English is pretty much just Dutch with a funny accent
Yeah definitely, he's op not a standard speaker. Too humble
He definitely had an upper hand.
"I think the Old English has helped me more than I realized it would."
Absolute fucking King.
If he also knew the Lower Saxon language he'd be doing this with two fingers up the nose.
Olde English still has a lot of the original Anglo-Saxon languages in it, and as Dutch is a direct descendant of those languages, it figures that would help ;-)
@@TheEvertw Old English is Anglo-Saxon. Those are the same thing. Old English was a group of related dialects from the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
Dutch is also a West Germanic language and hence shares many features with English. At the end of the Old English period, English underwent two major changes that made it distinctly different from other Germanic languages: 1. a massive simplification of its grammar; 2. Latinization (through Norman French) of most of its lexicon. This smudged away a lot of English's obvious similarities and parallels with its sister languages after the Old English period. Old English is hence the most similar among the stages of English to other Germanic languages, the rest of which did not undergo the same languages English did.
Dutch is not, however, an "Anglo-Saxon" language. The Anglo-Saxons was the name used to refer, very roughly, to the Germanic tribes that migrated to the British Isles after the Romans left. The ancestors of Dutch speakers, however, never left mainland Europe, and hence are not Anglo-Saxon. English's closest relative on the mainland is Frisian, which, together with English, forms the Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic languages. Dutch is more distantly related to English than Frisian is.
Simon is a descendant of the Anglo-Saxons and speaks their language, giving him a better understanding of the Germanic languages of his distant cousins than the rest of us English speakers.
Hope this clears things up.
@@LogiForce86 Is that an expression meaning "easily"? Very colourful!
@@barbarawright5306 Yup, if there is one thing odd about the Dutch language it's our proverbs and sayings. Also we like to swear or more like curse with horrible diseases. Like cancer, plague, cholera, tyfus, and more. When we curse we do it properly. 😅
I think once you dive into that part of our language you'll be amazed at how colorful it is.
As a native german that is almost fluent in dutch and currently at uni to become a Dutch teacher in the future, I actually got every sentence!
No, I‘m actually so impressed by Simon. I knew that old English is quite similar to modern Dutch and German but to be able to put the sentences together like that is seriously impressive.
Old englisch and dutch is more like german dialects spoken. As I know the dialects spoken near the border to belgium and the netherlands, I understand it pretty well.
@@oOIIIMIIIOo I think Low Lands German is not a German dialect. If it would be true... Old English and Dutch are German dialects. Shall ick di vertellen dat je Anglisk prat wer ick bün to Hus?😁
As a German with English knowledge I understand almost all. Especially if you hear the sentence and see the written from. Some sentences I understand immediately. Like "Mijn vriend doet kaas op zijn brood." Means in German "Mein Freund tut Käse auf sein Brot"
Acutally "tut" is mostly interchanged with "macht"(makes) in case, but in some regions of Germany tut is also used.
I felt really smart during this test, then I remembered I am Dutch.
Oh please! Hahaha
Same bro
i felt really smart too, as a german speaker
@@MrTimurLP that’s more impressive than if you’re dutch
Same
My knowledge of German seems to have given me an unfair advantage while I was playing along at home.
If you know German and English, Dutch is easy
@@angycucumber4319 are you sure? Dutch is a hard language, I am dutch and I sometimes struggle with the language
@@mr_heffy2576 No, I'm not saying it's easy to speak, I'm just saying that dutch is a mix of german and english, so it's really easy to understand.
@@angycucumber4319 some words from German are used yes, but that is almost none, and yes, we use a lot of English words, but that can't help you with the spelling (dutch words)
@@mr_heffy2576 Oh ok
simon was very good, didn't know how helpful old english can be. as an english speaking german I had no problem understanding.
I am Italian, I speak only basic German and I understood every sentence right away. So proud of myself
Great, you are talented. 😊 I guess you speak almost perfect German but you are "bescheiden", right?😊
@@AltIng9154 not at all, I speak German like a 4 year old at best , I can just guess the etymology of Germanic words from my English
@@stefaniac2095 .... some 4 years old kids are quite good, don't worry!🤗
I doubt that you understood every single word correctly
Bravissimo!!!
As a Danish, German and English speaker. Reading Dutch almost always makes perfect sense :)
As a German, Dutch and English speaker written Danish makes a lot of sense to me. It's probbably closest to Dutch. Altough when it's spoken I only understand very little ^^
Native Russian and German Speaker, almost native in English, with a slight accent.
Almost all spot on, but the spoken language throws me off when spoken fast or heavily slurred. Written it's a breeze.
@@0799qwertzuiop Same, written Dutch makes sense knowing German. Spoken Dutch is harder.
I speak English and German, and I got 7 of 8 right! (I got the supermarket one half right). A lot of them sound so similar,and the spelling is sooo close too!
As a German, Swedish and English speaker Dutch is easier to listen to than Danish
"will be representing a British English speaker" (who speaks Old English fluently)
that is the interesting part of it
Yeah, not exactly a typical English speaker is he
Honestly, a typical monolingual English speaker without knowledge of OE would kill a project like this. We just aren't used to listening to unfamiliar languages to try and make partial meaning out of them. Even in this video, they aren't solving riddles like the Romance languages videos do. Any videos for Germanic languages including English need either someone who is knowledgeable with OE or another Germanic language like Simon, Cefin from Leornende, and Dr. Jackson Crawford (specialist in ON), or maybe someone who is bi-dialectal and speaks a regional variation of English or Scots.
old englsich was verry close to old german and dutsch and danisch
so he kinda cheated
😂😂😂
impressive how Simon was able to understand everything by decoding the meanings with the solid knowledge of how language logic has developed trough time
i’m australian so a native english speaker with a VERY small amount of swedish knowledge, i can’t even speak complete sentences however that small amount of knowledge helped me get so much?! i’m impressed 😭
Same, native English speaker with a small amount of German, and it helped me too!
"We have the word aardappel" Simon immediately: Like earth-apple, ground-apple. The lad would have Dutch down in days :D
Like the French Pomme de Terre "apple of the ground"
That's a pretty obvious one, really. If you're even half-educated, you should know that Aardvaark is Dutch for "earth-pig."
@@DieFlabbergast aardvark is an Afrikaans word.
@@PetraStaal Afrikaans is a Germanic language derived from Dutch. So it kinda makes sense that it has similarities.
I knew what this meant too, but I couldn’t remember why I knew that “aard” was earth.
Simon's analytic skills are really impressive in the way he disconnects from his own linguistic background
The fact that he found "squirrel" from "eekhoorn" while everyone saw "acorn" was very impressive.
from Simon's videos I already noticed how close old English is to dutch, certainly if you understand local dutch dialects
Simon’s analytic skills are that good because he speaks old English, So he knows all the cognates and isn’t confused by non-cognate words like the others are. For example, he recognized DAG as day right away because it’s the same in old English. He also knew that dog is not an old English word and that HUND is the Germanic word.
@@mctbaggins2084 I am German and I fell for it. Even though we also say "Eichhörnchen" which means small eekhorn.
31
I’m native level in speaking English and never studied Dutch before. I understood almost all the sentences once they were transcribed because like Simon I love studying the history of English and that allows an easier comprehension. Seeing the roots of languages is so interesting and helpful!
Alot of these sentences will be a bit similar in English because in modern English they use 100 % germanic words as the sentences
Maybe I'm just a linguistic geek, but I love watching these videos. And It's very interesting to see how much these people do or do not understand Dutch. Keep it up😉 (Dutchie here!)
"My friend makes cash with his blood."
- Norbert, 2021
19:51
outside the supermarket with a dog
Norbert rules 😄😆😎
Yeah that was hilarious 😂😂😂
If Norbert were Transylvanian this translation would seem perfectly reasonable.
There needs to be a video of Old English, German, and Dutch.😌
💯
Absolutely!
and frisian
@@haroldgodwinson3410 That would amazing as well but I have feeling Norbet won’t do it 🥲 I wish he more open to doing more Germanic languages
That’s what we’ve been asking for
I think it really helps to speak at least some German on top of English. My German is really basic, but almost all the correct answers I got were with the help of German. As an English teacher, I also have some knowledge of Old English but I never thought of it, just my elementary German. And by the way, I'm Polish, so cześć Norbert! (and hi guys 😊)
I know English quite well, but I feel like my basic knowledge of German helped me a lot more here.
I have the same observations. Też jako Polak👍
Made the same observation. I had the basic structure and verbs down but the nouns required me to dig deep into my limited German vocabulary. I think I did OK with a real basic German understanding and my native English.
I imagine the Dutch and Germans would be better on soaking to each other than trying to read each other's words due to how similar everything sounds but how differently it looks.
I always admire the language skills of slavic people. You learn Germanic language with almost no problems and we are still the "
who are the tribes incable to speak at all,... as you call us... name us... "Nemek"... right? 😁
As an Afrikaner who speaks Afrikaans I too could understand and make out the meaning of all of the sentences.
Very interesting video.
Thanks.
Greetings from South Africa 🇿🇦
As an Afrikaans person I felt like i was almost cheating. The patat got me though.
Afrikaans lijkt heel veel op Nederlands.
So I see why it would feel like cheating. 😉
Patat is a sweet potato in Afrikaans
Yeah the patat got me as well, i thought it would be weird eating sweet potato with mayonaise but hey you never know what Europeans get up to
Afrikaans is my 2nd language... and I haven't needed to use it since leaving school but I understood about 80% of what she was saying. 😎
@@jasonmuller1199 Chips with Mayonnaise. I only see that in Great Yarmouth in the UK. But then again that is close to Den Helder in the Netherands where you see fish and chip shops like in the UK
As a native German and as an english speaker, I could understand nearly everything.
same lol. Also as a native german and as an english speaker
Dutch an german are very alike, im a native dutch speaker and i can understand german without having learnt it.
Goed dat je een beetje Nederlands kan dat is toch een veel leukere taal dan Duits
As a non-germanic language speaker, i still understood pretty much everything.
Many of those words are somewhat close to english, just have to think for a while.
same, but for many only with the transcript
I loved this video! Please make more like this and your guest host (Kim) does a great job.
Loved this segment. As a Dutch learner, I found the discussion to be quite informative. And very fun!
Funny how Simon was able to understand a lot of it through his command of Old English - when I studied English in university, I aced my Old English classes by reading everything as though it were Dutch.
As a native English speaker who had to learn Dutch in school, I had the same experience in reverse lol I was surprised at how much Old English I could understand without having ever studied it
In my case, as a native Spanish speaker, what helps me with the understanding of Portuguese or Italian is my knowledge of Old Spanish. :D
It would have helped a lot if the guys knew some basic German. For example:
ik = ich
liggen = liegen
dag = Tag
Wij willen = Wir wollen
kopen = kaufen
brood = Brot
@@einaradame8132 what helps me with both Spanish and Italian, is my high school French and a rudimentary knowledge of Latin.
@@hemiolaguy also the cheese was recognisable spelt but pronounced differently
The "false friends" words are strong with this language.
What’s false friends?
@@makkiewakkie9267 When a word sounds like something in your language so you assume it's the same meaning, but is often totally or amusingly different.
Yeah, as German native speaker I fell into a few traps^^ But aardappel (or so) is the same Word as the Austrian german word Erdapfel which means potato, it was funny to see that this word turns up in both the northern and southern "border regions" of the german language.
@@eli_7295 Same thing in English. Potatoes used to be called earth apples. And in French they're pommes de terre. Apples of Earth. In Chinese they are earth bean "土豆 (tudou)." Basically they are all called earth + some type of crop in most languages.
The neat thing about Dutch false friends is that the correct translation is usually close by as well.
Dutch "door" has nothing to do with the English word 'door' despite being pronounced and spelt exactly the same, but the correct translation "deur" still looks and sounds pretty similar to the English one.
Some more examples:
Dutch "beer" does not mean 'beer'. Beer in Dutch is "bier", pronounced exactly the same as in English. "Beer" is pronounced like 'bear' (the animal) and that's what it means.
Dutch "heel" (16:30) has nothing to do with the English word 'heel'. The Dutch for a heel is 'hiel' which is pronounced exactly the same as in English.
Dutch "wil" means 'want', not 'will'. However, it historically meant that in English too, and you still see that meaning in expressions like 'if you will', or in old literature ('You may speak as you will'). To say that you are going to do something in Dutch, you can say "Ik zal __" (literally 'I shall __') or "Ik ga __" (literally 'I go ___').
Dutch "fijn" sounds like English 'fine', but it actually means very nice, not just okay. It used to mean that in English too, which is why we have things like 'fine wine', which actually means 'very nice wine', not just 'okay wine'.
These videos are so much fun. Thank you for them.
Im not a linguist, but i know english and also remember a bit of german from school, so it helped me to guess almost all sentences. This is great channel and great idea! Pozdrowienia z Polski😊
English speaker here: Dutch is the ONLY language where if I can hear people speaking 10-20 metres away, I think it's English, but 10 seconds later when they're closer to me, I realise it's not.
You are ONLY the five millionth person to make that observation :)
I would add Flemish to that as well.
@@RockSolitude Flemish is basically Dutch. I've never heard Frisian but I believe it's also close to English in that way.
@TwinTurbo Ray Yes, I agree. I said Flemish is basically the same, not Frisian.
@@decekfrokfr3mdx Frisian and Old-English are indeed close related.
"Dutch use patat and the Flemish use friet" half of the Netherlands just became honorary Belgians I guess lol
well in flanders you'd say "frieten" or "frietjes" not "friet"
patat is literally wrong it is literally friet
@@daanmani409 patat is gewoon goed. Patat verwijst naar de aardappel terwijl friet verwijst naar het feit dat het gefrituurd is. We zouden eigenlijk zoals de Duitser aardappel frieten moeten zeggen.
@@matthijsoudkerk8859 De Duitsers hebben het van de Fransen, vandaar dat ze ' Pommes ' zeggen...wat dan weer appel betekend...dus ' gefrituurde appels '.
@@LycanthropiesSpell ik weet het. Misschien moeten we gewoon gefrituurde aardappel zeggen
Really liked the video. Keep up the good work :)
I really enjoyed this, a part two would be good!
I like how I, as a German, immediately read "Begreift ihr, was hier steht?"
And yes, yes, ich begreife das, bzw. verstehe ich das.
Norwegian: Begriper, forstår, fatter. :)
The direct English translation would be “do you grip what stands here” 😂
@@NakulGanapathy Almost! "Greifen" without "Be-" means to grasp/grip, like in English we say "Did you grasp what he said". They're closely related :)
Except that 'begreifen' in German signifies an understanding of the thought (if any...) expressed in an utterance, not merely linguistic understanding. The Dutch 'begrijpen' means the latter, though.
@@herr_k69 yeah the direct translation would be do you grasp what I’m saying but I feel like that’s a very posh way to say do you understand what I’m saying which in German would be “verstehst du, was ich sage”
It proves the proximity of old Germanic languages. Simon had the advantage with old English
Yes! I bet he'd recognize the Dutch past participle prefix from words like "yclept" (called). Did earlier English have that "I have Uncle Jan a pen bought" word order?
@@JamesJones-zt2yx Maybe, but German definitely has it
@@JamesJones-zt2yx no need for sarcasm. I do not know Dutch and I know that it is its own language that developed its own quirks. I also know that at the time of old English all Germanic languages were still very close to one another having barely split apart for only a few centuries.
Loved this video !
The eekhorn was the only word which got me. Thought it was kind of a bird sitting in the tree. All the other sentences I was right.
As a German I can understand good, but after reading/seeing the sentences it became much more clear for me.
I just love these kind of vids!!!
Please go on with that!!!
Me, too. First I was thinking what kind of animal can sit on a tree? Maybe it is the english word air..., so its a bird. As I saw the word horn writen, I was thiking Eichhorn and then Eichhörnchen.
I really like these "can X language speakers understand Y language speakers" videos. I also really like how laid back and quietly confident Simon Roper is.
As someone who learnt a bit of german and swedish, i can understand dutch fairly well actually
Yeah swedish seems so similar.
As a native Dutch speaker, we can understand German pretty well (and vice versa) but Swedish, except from some words, is hard to understand.
I studied German and learned a little bit of old English. It helped a lot.
Same, I know English and I'm learning German at the moment.
Same with me. Only “naar” threw me off. Heard it as Svenska “när”, so I just went with English “near”. I studied Swedish much more than German, though.
Thanks Norbert! Your very creative answers were so entertaining for my German and English speaking self!
Loved your video. I am from chile but interested in dutch language, i know that teacher so the video got my eye and i watched... So cool!!! Thanks for making it and sharing.
No, Simon was the only one to get the first sentence right, becoause it was “boeken” (plural), Matt made it singular.
My thoughts exactly lol
Yea because I just assumed that boeken was plural because I think german and dutch grammar are similar
@@angycucumber4319 yeah they are
I'm a Brit who speaks a little German and understood each sentence. Speaking that combination really helps with Dutch. Wherever English has adopted a Norman/French word that stops you understanding its Dutch version, knowing its Germanic equivalent fills in the gaps.
Except for quite a few words like "slim" for "smart" or "Er" for "there".
As an english speaker with a reasonable level of norwegian i understood everything (once i saw it written at least)
I would kind of agree with you, but the languages: German and Dutch are different from my opinion. For example: I'm speaking Dutch because I'm from Holland (the Netherlands), but I almost can't understand anything from German people
@@guangvandenbosch1402 even in written form?
That is really interesting to hear. I know as an English/Spanish speaker, I see so many cognates and similarities between Spanish and French (obviously) but also with English...especially if you know what letters typically replace each other. E.g. caballero, chevalier, cavalry(man) (i.e. cavalier, the original "gentleman" horseman, landed "gentry"). The "V" is often pronounced like a "B" in Spanish, not only in written form, but even with native Spanish speakers, who pronounce Veronica "Beronica" etc. You can see the Norman influence on English for sure and thus the related Spanish word back to the root Latin, at least relating to words that are not Germanic.
This is a fun and entertaining way to learn Dutch! Thanks!
This was great Norbert!
Me as a Dutch person watching this, impressed by Simon’s impressive translations. Like for real, he did good!
Armyyyyy 🤭
Yes indeed he did. Amazing how the antique Englisch has simularities with modern Dutch.
well, that is because he id fluent in old english.
old english is the original anglo-saxon origin of english, which means it is purely germanic with influences from Northern Germany/the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
This was English before the vowel shift and before the Normans and French influenced the language to create modern English.
Old-English is a pure germanic language and thus he knows alot of cognates and is used to the grammar. He also knoes some German.
Check out some of the videos featuring Simon speaking old english, and you'll find that goes both ways.
@@meganoob12 Right it clearly doesn't really show wether an english speaker would understand dutch. He has knowledge of a dead langugae and knows all those details about sound shifts ect. Also if he knows German then he should be able to read most of the dutch sentences anyways.
As a native german speaker, I always find Dutch sounds kinda cute, and a bit like a mixture of German and English. I'm also happy, that I understood quite a lot of it :)
The Dutch in this video is a bit different from usual though. The pacing's a lot slower since otherwise it sounds like a single word to people who can't speak it. And the pronunciation is slightly different as well for many of the words to what you'd hear in the language for real... I'm assuming that's done to make it easier for non-Dutch speakers to understand.
I understand why you're saying Dutch sounds like English a bit but maybe only so in the Netherlands.. In Flanders the 'r' is spoken more like the french one, from the throat (okay weird explanation) and in the Netherlands it sounds more like 'are', like in English. We in Belgium also think German is cute :) or me at least
@@annacluckers1698 this question will sound ignorant... So then tap/trill "r" is not used in dutch? If i want to pick up at least a mildly dutch accent I will have to use basically the English "r"?
I'm Romanian, but I can do all three "r"s (and a few others like the Czech one), just want to know which sounds more authentic.
@@annacluckers1698 The r sound really depends on what part of the country someone is from. We're a small country but there are strong regional differences. An Achterhoeker sounds very different from a Hollander and also sounds very different from a Limburger.
Very fun video! Definitely worth a subscription!
Knowing German definitely helped tons with this! I'm a non-native English speaker, and I found myself using more of my German knowledge than my English one for this. I'll say that the one sentence with 'slim' in it definitely tripped me up!!
Me, an English teacher who speaks Dutch: *my time has come*
How well did you do?
*Seen by Lauren*
I feel like Simon is the smart kid sitting quietly in the back of the class.
As it is already mentioned, Simon is not an ordinary English guy. His hobby is Old English... that means no wonder he understands Dutch and Low Lands German. 😊
Really enjoyed the comparison of languages! Here in Ireland, I could (almost) understand everything. A little German and some knowledge of older English forms helped a lot. Please do more of these. Delighted to find your channel!
I once metvs guy frome Ireland I dpoke to for a longer time in general english when I asked him to speak his hometown dialect and I was surprised, that itt was a mix of german, german dialect, dutch and normal englisch and maybe some svandinavian I am thinking of at the moment. When you are young, you don't know much aboutvthevworld. Today I can see the common roots in different languages. 😄
Dit is leuk en interessant!
❤
Simon knowing basically everything was so satisfying, as me as a German speaker I could understand every sentence and was just hoping they would catch on 😂
In swabian Baum is also Boom.
Simon is Germanic equivalent of Vit and his knowledge about Slavic languages 😜
Whenever someone is fluent in old English than its Simon. I like him very much. He is such a nerd in what he is doing but that made him even more likeable.
German is my 3rd language so it was pretty easy to make out most of what she said
as a person who also comes from poland as norbert, I thought he would catch on much more than he did! german is often offered as a second foreign language in polish middle/high schools, so most people I know had some contact with that language, as small it might've been. I learnt german for 3 years in middle school, and even though I remember nothing of it (lol), the basic understanding of how it works helped me immensely with dutch.
I lived in Brittany for 35 years. Once, 20 years ago, a friend asked me to interpret with three Friesian farmers and a Breton farmer to negotiate their manure spreading quotas. I don't speak Dutch or Friesian. The farmers understood my English and I understood their Friesian.. Another time in 1988 in the Netherlands, in a campground, a young man asked me " Is het water koud?" (Which it was) so I simply answered in English. There are enough dialects in England to steer a person to a fairly close understanding of either Nederlands or Friesian or even Plat Dütch which has amongst the older generation a close sounding language to certain dialects in England or more precisely in Kent or Essex.
Intetesting, thanks!
I’m Swedish and spent some time in and around Hamburg/Lübeck as a kid. At the time I got along just adapting my ear to the local dialect and moulding what I said, so I could buy icecream or ask simple questions like directions.
Sadly it all went away when studying formal German in school bc High German pronounciation is so different.
You know there is Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Northex where you ken(t) speak some Saxon.
I am a native German speaker, I speak fluent Afrikaans and English. I understand Dutch perfectly when spoken slowly.
Really fun! I speak English and have studied German and so happy that I got almost all of them correct! So learning Dutch doesn’t seem like such a stretch for me!
For me as a Swede, this was surprisingly easy to understand when reading it.
Yeah, a bit of German also helps.
@@criwall can confirm
1rst: boeken (böker), op (på)
2nd: "dag" (dag), ga (gå)
3rd: "Wij" (Vi), willen (vill), kopen (köpa)
Learning svenska here
It was easy for me too, being someone in the UK doing German at school
@@angycucumber4319 3 Germanic languages
As an Afrikaans speaker I enjoyed this. Learned something new.
As a Dutch native speaker I find Afrikaans a very beautiful and poetic language. Greeting from the Netherlands to our Afrikaans language brothers in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe!
@@2eme_voltigeur652 Yes Afrikaans is a poetic language, Just like Dutch. I love singers like Stef Bos that sings not only in Dutch but also in Afrikaans. You must listen to singers like Jo Black and Juanita Du Plessis.
Sorry you have to live in South Africa. Stay safe, my dude.
@@thegoodlydragon7452 what's wrong with living in south Africa ? I live here, life's good here.
@@jacoolckers6465 Ek het afrikaans en engels grootgeword. Praat altwee.
If Simon is interested, the Brabantse Yeesten are written at roughly the point the two languages diverged. The key is to read it in a Geordie accent
Well done Simon ,i very much enjoyed this as i speak many languages and am particularly fascinated by Old English and Frisian .
For someone, who's a russian native speaker, who can also speak English and German, I was pretty proud of myself, that I could understand Dutch and also translate into all of the languages I speak. Thanks for raising my self-esteem, I guess :3
That's pretty awesome! I'm trying to learn a little Russian myself but in my experience it's quite difficult to learn a language that's not really in the same family of your native language (or distant at best). It helps that some words are similar but it's reaaally hard to read a Russian sentence (and the Cyrillic alphabet doesn't help either :D), I try to pick out the words that I recognize and interpret the rest from there. It only makes me respect people who learn English more, I always thought that at least basic English was pretty easy but I’m just lucky that my native language is closely related…
Молодец!
Same!
Knowledge of common German words helped me too, even though the only Germanic language I know is English. It was interesting.
@@CrippleX89 it will only get easier, don't worry) Although that will take quite some time (I used to learn Japanese before, so I know how it feels to basically start learning to read anew), you will succeed, I'm sure of it! Good luck on your journey, luv! Удачи и всего наилучшего!
Very impressed by Simon and how Old English helps him to understand Dutch.
Yeah, as a Dutch speaker, I also noticed I understand Old English better than native English speakers who only speak English.
Your being impressed could be avoided by the most basic knowledge of the languages spoken in your own tiny backyard.
@@bernarddelafontaine4825 ¿Que?
@@generalgrafx That's what I was afraid of.
It’s so fascinating to me the roots in old and Middle English and how close it shows English is to other Germanic languages like Dutch.
Simon is absolutely great with his knowledge of old English 👍👍👍
As a German who had 3 years of exposure to belgian flemish in his childhood, I understood everything perfectly and was pretty amused by some guesses, especially by Norbert ;)
As a Pole who also knows German, I could understand much more than Norbert and Matt. But anyway, I think both of them could have performed better in this test. If you see a written 'brood', how can you even think about 'blood'?
Simon's performance and analytical thinking was simply great.
And Norbert's ideas for videos are great as well!!
@@wkostowski Well, I thought in Swedish "Bröd", and Danish/Norwegian "Brød"
@Mariusz Krawiec exactly
Simon: I run a channel in historical linguistics and I will be representing British English speakers.
Me: And you're semi-fluent in Old English, so you're kind of a ringer in this game...
Yeah, European languages - and certainly the Germanic ones - are all the same if you go a few hundred yrs back. Why don't we all learn 'old European' ;)
@Essen sie mit Brötchen Just need to go back further bro. Eventually we'll get to the source 😁
Germans and humor..... And thats only a tease btw.
@@arturama8581 Welsh?
@@vanpallandt5799 Celtic would be the one I guess.
@Essen sie mit Brötchen return to proto-indo-european
I was born in America, but raised in the family that immigrated from the Netherlands, my father being Dutch, my mother American, and I understood the meaning of the sentences, but not Word for Word put together, but it was fun. I look forward to more of these.
I would never miss a class with a teacher like that
I'm Afrikaans and could follow with ease. I'm surprised by the similarities between Old English and Dutch. Super cool!
In Afrikaans:
1) Die boeke lê op die tafel.
2) Ek gaan elke dag supermark toe.
3) Ons wil 'n nuwe kar koop. (some people might use "motor" instead of "kar")
4) Ek eet aartappelskyfies met mayonaise.
5) Norbert is baie slim.
6) My vriend sit kaas op sy brood.
7) Daar sit 'n eekhoring in die boom.
8) Ons maak 'n video / Ons is besig om 'n video te maak.
ek was net besig om die selfde ding te dink.
@@nilsvn2052 I find it so cool that I can understand some Dutch by knowing some English ! I love it! But Spanish is my mother tongue. Afrikaans sounds so cool !
@@nilsvn2052 Yes indeed! Leaning languages make me happy!
I wonder if I could understand almost everything from the fact that I learned some German back in the days, or from Afrikaans I've heard playing Metal Gear Solid 5 way too much.
"Norbert is heel slim" would be a correct Afrikaans sentence as well although a bit archaic.
Finally!!! More Germanic languages!!!
Just look at how serious Simon is. LOVE him.
Fascinating stuff👍, I'm (arrogant) English so only speak that language! After many happy holidays many years ago in Belgium I taught myself a bit of Flemish and so I got the gist of most, if not all after seeing the sentences written down. My love of a lot of Dutch music certainly helps too!!
As a native German and also a fluid English speaker this was surprisingly easy
I'm Spanish but started learning German some months ago and I also found it pretty easy thanks to knowing the basics of German!
Same here! Native German, fluent English - - I feel like if it's slow and I can read along, I understand 90% of Dutch.
If it's in a normal spoken context, i.e. watching a film in Dutch, it's a bit more difficult but I'd say I understand enough to get the idea most of the time
@@catblues8645 same with german. I just have difficulties with the grammar.
-your dutch neighbor
I'm the opposite with the two languages, and I made the mistake of leaning to a German possible translation instead of an English one. For example I never thought "elke" could be "every" since I was expecting something similar to "jeder".
@@scottlarson1548 to be fair, there's no real way to connect "each" and "elke" without going through the Old English like Simon did. Elke just seems to be something you have to know (or have a great command of Old English) to know.
I have watched several of Simon's linguistic videos and he is a true linguist whether he knows it or not. Very impressive!
Where can you find Simons videos, please?
@@MonteSlider on his channel, just look up Simon Roper on CZcams
@@MonteSlider I hope you looked up his videos. They’re such a treat!
@@MonteSlider Just search "Simon Roper"
I am brazilian and I`ve been learning german since I moved to Germany 6 months ago, I`m really glad that I could understand almost everything in the video, indeed the two languages are really similar. 🙃
As a Swiss, it is pretty easy :) thanks for the content!
Dutch is like a strange combination of English and German, I an a native English speaker and I can understand basic to intermediate German so I understand a lot of this actually lol
You are partly right. But it's the other way around, to say it in simpler terms : English is what happens when french and germanic love eachother very very much and they give eachother a special hug. Which is one of the reasons why english is so easy to learn for speakers of either romance or germanic languages, as they basicaly already know half the vocabulary before even starting. That and english grammar is significantly simpler than in any of those languages, and borrows heavily from germanic, ergo, it's easier for speakers then it is for speakers of romance languages.
Dutch and German are very similar but english is often closer to dutch then it is to german (and even closer to danish), eg:
German: Ich drinke Milch.
Dutch: Ik drink melk.
English: I drink milk.
As someone who was raised in both french and dutch, english is the easiest language for me to learn, most of the vocabulary I already knew, the words that I don't know I can mostly just guess, and the grammar, well... To make it clear, in high school, we had a 400 page french grammar book, something similar for dutch, whereas for english, we received the grammar on about 50 flashcards. The hardest thing for me when it comes to english is knowing when to use "then" or "than". The rest is very similar to basic dutch, dutch is however much more complicated.
Want to learn a few 100 french words in 10 seconds? Virtualy every word in english ending with -tion was borrowed entirely from french, eg direction, detection, frustration, annihilation... and they are still the same words in french to this day (although for some the meaning has shifted).
@capusvacans “and give eachother a special hug” i giggled haha
@@capusvacans *trinke
Look up the Great Vowel Shift, English had the same throaty sound as Dutch and sounded very closes to it until the shift around 500 years ago, that's why we have the weird "gh" spellings in English, it's a left over from the old spelling of the Dutch "G"
Dutch and English were once very close. But the Norman french influence changed most of its original grammar and words. That and the vowel shift.
Genuinely enjoyed this video, was a lot of fun to guess along with you guys
Same!
yoooooo it's my man Tom, how you doing!
This man is why I learned Italian. Thank you Tom
Thank you, Tom!
same too!
It was interesting how much Simon managed to get right from his knowledge of Old English. He will greatly enjoy the relation between the English word "Town" and the Dutch word for garden being "Tuin".
It's really interesting how well i could understand the language.
I think there's a couple factors contributing to this, mostly being able to speak German, English and French of course.
Though, i do think the fact that my native language is Dutch really helps me along quite a ways here. :P
De groeten uit Brabant. ;)
I understood quite a lot as a native German speaker. Simon rocked it though.
Don't y'all have it easy talking to Scandinavians and shit? Basically same languages
@@lesROKnoobz the languages are really different when spoken. Most of the similarities become visible when you write the words/sentences. Although once you learn the pronounciation it is pretty easy to learn the language.
Pardon my spelling, I hope you understand what I am trying to say
@@lesROKnoobz I'm German and I could understand these easy sentences.
Dutch is very close German, Low German, and Frisian. So we can communicate ;)
I can also read recipes in Danish and cook the dish, but hearing Danish spoken sounds totally different to my ears XD (could also be Chinese)
Never tried with Swedish and Norwegian.
It's a lot easier to understand either oral or written Dutch when one knows at least basic German or Norwegian / Danish. It's easy to find out references like "au" (kaufen) "o" (kopen) "ø" (kjøpe) etc. That's why Simon is a little bit privileged here. 😅
Swedish also apples to this equation
I find as an English native speaker and a mid level German speaker I can understand the gist of Dutch when I see it. The pronunciation kills me though
English is enough in this case, you just need to know about the palatalization of k before front vowels and about the evolution of *au to ea and apply that to "cheap" and ok no this is pretty complicated
I understood these because I used to watch the Norwegian show Skam. I know zero Dutch and French is my only foreign language so it was definitely the native English/very basic Norweigan
I think Scandinavians have an advantage with Dutch due to the influence of Old Norse on the language. English speakers have some Old Norse & Anglo-Saxon influences that help also.
I’d like to see more videos that explore the common ancestry between English, German & Scandinavian languages with an emphasis upon words that are essentially unchanged, …like ‘egg’.
As a native speaker of English and German, this was almost easy. I got caught up a little on the spoken, but once written, everything was clear. I'd love to do one of these with you.
Because I only started learning Dutch for 1 month, but at the same time I spend 3 months already in de Nederland. Surprisingly I can understand all 8 sentences in the first attempt. Thank you so much for sharing, as I know for English speakers is also frustrating to learn Dutch, which I strongly resonate LOL...
Simon is impressive and instructive with his examples of intelligibility with Old English.
He earned my subscription
As a native Swedish speaker, I’m amazed by the fact that I understood most of what she said!
Agreed! I read the thumbnail and in my head i immediately thought "of course i understand what you're saying"
As a native Dutch speaker learning Swedish I’m surprised on how easy it is to understand
my boyfriend is from sweden, i'm from belgium so I speak dutch, and he understands most of my conversations I have with friends in dutch
Swedes learn good Dutch in a year in the Netherlands. I've seen it!
@@shanrafnezden7958 yea someone told me once it's because it's a similair sentence build. some words are the same aswell wich helps i guess
As a native Spanish speaker, who thinks every now and then of learning Dutch for quite a long time now, this video totally boosted my confidence‼️I mean, I'm a Bolivian who's been learning English for the past 14 years and German for almost the past 10. I got almost all of them correctly. I only failed the sentence about Norbert being smart and not slim or bad. Thanks, I think this gave my the final little push I needed in order to totally go for it 👍‼️
A very interesting and fun video to watch, thank you, or diolch in Welsh .😄
fascinating that "liggen" is the verb for to lie/to lay; my uncle was a farmer, in Yorkshire, and if he wanted his dog to lie down he would say "lig thi dahn"
I good rule of thumb is that g in a continental germanic language = y or i in English.
Eg dag->day, lig->liy~lay, etc
Makes you wonder where the "dahn" comes from. Lig and Thi are pure Dutch, though thi is archaic (Dij, Dijn compare with mij, mijn).
@@TheEvertw I would like to think that there is more to it but perhaps it is nothing more complicated than simply being the Yorkshire pronunciation of 'down'?
@@clymtc That's exactly what it is.
He said this: "ligt ie dan"
"dan/dahn" means does. "ie" is short for hij / he (like you / ya')
It is like a question without asking it, more affirmative? I think the best English translation is There he lies/lays.
In the question form, it would be Does he lie?
As an English person who did a German gcse about 30 years ago, this was quite easy. The Germanic languages are quite similar it seems!
Yupp. As a German this was comparatively easy. But there are pitfalls. Like in the last sentence "er zit" I was quite sure it meant "he sees" because "er sieht" = "he sees" in German and the pronounciation is similar.
I agree. I am a native English speaker (Australian) with a limited knowlege of German. I found both the written and spoken Dutch had German "hints".
I do agree. As a German from the northern lowlands, 90% didn't even need a translation. It is still possible to communicate with ppl speaking Dutch, lowland German, Flamish and southafrican Afrikaans both in spoken or written words.
Hi, I'm from South Africa and in schools students learn a language called Afrikaans. I found certain aspects quite similar to Afrikaans as well, I got thrown off here and there but most of it was pretty easy😂 (my years of Afrikaans finally came in handy😂)
@@NightKnightJoR Yeah, I'm a native Dutch and English speaker and occasionally ask my friends who are South African to talk in Afrikaans and I can understand about 90% of the words, manage to piece together the remainder through conversational context.
It was very fascinating following this as a native danish speaker - many cognates between danish, german and dutch that were very helpful. I think it has a very similar effect to knowing old english, since actually old english also has some cognates with norse as well.