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Discount on German? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6867 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 16 20 February 2006 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would agree Dutch is closer to English. Plus the grammar is not quite as tricky as in German, and there are only two noun distinctions as opposed to three. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7193 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 16 20 February 2006 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Given that English's closest relative (apart from all the French vocabulary) is Frisian, I suppose it's natural that English is more like Dutch than High German.
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| jong Newbie Chile theheap.awardspace.c Joined 7156 days ago 23 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Spanish* Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 16 20 February 2006 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Other grammatical features that both Spanish and German have, but English doesn't, are: - An overt Subjunctive: one really has to learn a set of verb conjugations for Subjunctive - Formal and informal pronouns: du/Sie, tú/Usted - Verb conjugation according to person: English doesn't conjugate verbs according to person as heavily as German and Spanish do. - Adjective-noun agreement: English adjectives never change. So, having learnt Spanish at least makes you aware of these. EDIT: I just remembered another one: - Seemingly useless reflexive pronoun: German sich, Spanish se. Learners are told that they mean "self": himself, itself, myself, etc. but sooner or later they will discover that a lot of verbs have a reflexive pronoun attached. And, seemingly, this pronoun adds no meaning. Edited by jong on 22 February 2006 at 9:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 16 20 February 2006 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks jong, for reminding me. ;)
I only gave an example of what I believe beginners notice at once. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aquarius Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6903 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Bengali, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 16 20 February 2006 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now things are looking much better!
It seems that Spanish grammar has more in common with German than English has. When combined with all the cognates that English and German has, this should cut at least some time off the effort required to learn German. This makes me feel a little better since I already know(from this great forum among many places) that German grammar can be quite difficult to master. Even a 10% discount on learning German would be better than nothing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6863 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 14 of 16 21 February 2006 at 10:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm really convinced that Dutch is closer to German than to English. German grammar is maybe somewhat different, but English grammar is still more different.
Similarities are the word order, the adjective declination, the vocabulary, the tenses, the plural (except for the -er plural),... (Furora Celtica please notice that Dutch nouns are masculine, feminine or neutral just like in German (there really is a distinction between masc and fem!)) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7106 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 15 of 16 21 February 2006 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's true in a lot of aspects. I don't know a whole lot about Dutch and German, but I know that English didn't come out of Dutch. Instead they all have the same roots in being West Germanic languages.
Dutch has the sound shifts that modern High German hasn't got. However, likely the vast influences from other languages have made Modern English less like Dutch than German is to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6863 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 16 of 16 21 February 2006 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
In fact German has got some sound shifts that Dutch hasn't (it's vice versa). Originally German was like Dutch: Appel instead of Apfel, ik instead of ich, dat instead of das and so on. The sounds shifted during the sixteenth century (in fact it's hard to determine the date, it was a long-term process). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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