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Mysterious similarities Swedish/Dutch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6028 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 17 of 27 23 November 2009 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also sometimes am surprised about how similar words can be between those aforementioned languages. But usually these words tend to fit into some sort of continuity, although official country languages sometimes may have preferred a word with a different etymological background to be the 'main' word.
As I was trying to think of some examples, I didn't manage to come up with any. Though, I'm quite sure too that these words exist, they just seem to be the exception rather than the rule. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6125 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 18 of 27 23 November 2009 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, based on the lack of examples, the rule appears to be NL = SE = DE = EN (meaning at least two of these are similar in almost every case) with the pattern NL = SE ≠ DE ≠ EN just being a part of that rule. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eddard Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6757 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC1, German, Swedish Studies: French, Italian | Message 19 of 27 18 February 2010 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I actually know of two words which are EXACTLY the same in Swedish and Dutch:
Armband - armband (bracelet) halsband - halsband (collar) I cannot come up with any more examples, but as a native speaker of Dutch and having a strong command of Swedish, I'm definitely aware of the similarities, especially in the written language. Those similarities usually escape our ears when listening to spoken Swedish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5568 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 20 of 27 18 February 2010 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I realise this is pretty off the point of this topic - but I would disagree with the assertion that English is 'peppered' with Celtic words. There are only a tiny number of 'Celtic' words in English and many of these come into the English language from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries when the English were engaged in trade or military action with the so-called Celts on its border (e.g. words such as Tinker, Tory or Whiskey). Often 'Celtic' words in English only have reference to things that are related to a celtic nation (i.e. shamrock, clan or claymore). The evidence for what is now England being linguistically and ethnically Celtic in pre-Saxon times is growing slimmer as time goes on. The old explanation from medieval commentators like Gildas was that there was some kind of genocide of the Brythonic people has never been backed up by any real historical evidence. In addition, there is a growing body of evidene that the people of the eastern half of England were essentially Belgic and spoke some kind of German language prior to the Saxon invasion and that this, rather than the genocide theory, is why 'Celtic' words do not appear with any degree of regularity in either Old English or modern English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gon-no-suke Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6437 days ago 156 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: Korean, Malay, Swahili | Message 21 of 27 20 February 2010 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Using my mighty powers of deduction (or would this be induction?) to add three more: arm - arm hals - hals band - band ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| taKen Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mindofthelinguist.woRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6120 days ago 176 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Dutch, French Studies: German, Icelandic | Message 22 of 27 21 February 2010 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think this is all due to trade and prestige. Dutch is supposedly the easiest language for a Norwegian to learn, so I pretty much expect the same is true for a Swede. Overlooking the standard pronunciation, I must stress that there also are striking similarities between certain Scandinavian dialects and Dutch/Flemish, as well. Off the top of my head I'll mention some that are relevant to the standard pronunciation of Norwegian/Swedish. Bear in mind that some of these similarities aren't at all that special, considering that they probably trace back to proto-Germanic (like "hand" or "foot"):
NL Deur SE/NO Dör/Dør NL Stoel SE/NO Stol NL Zitten SE/NO Sitte NL Willen SE/NO Ville (NN Vilja) One that's relevant to my dialect (Trøndersk) NL Kerk TR Kjerk Someone noted that the pronunciation of "heel" was more like "hail" than the Swedish pronunciation, well that's not how one pronounces it in Flemish. Please bear in mind that there are different ways of pronouncing Dutch, not just one :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5927 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 23 of 27 27 March 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I've found a few more similar words to add:
berg means the same thing (mountain) and is spelled exactly the same way in both languages; but the pronounciation differs. (SE)begripa (NL) begrijpen - to understand. (SE) begrepp (NL) begrip - idea (SE)berömd (NL) beroemd - famous (SE) betala (NL) betalen - pay (SE) behaglig (NL) behaaglijk - pleasant (there are other words for this in both languages but I can't remember them now) (SE) bahandla (NL) bahandelen - to handle or to treat. (SE) arbete (NL) arbeid - work, job; I think this one is also found in High German - arbeit. If I knew more German I could probably add German forms for at least some of the other words I've listed, but I'm not going to look for those now. Edited by mick33 on 27 March 2010 at 10:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5841 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 24 of 27 27 March 2010 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, people really got engaged in this question!
I still haven't been back to Holland since I wrote this post, so I have no update. But it's nice to see that many others have noticed this too, and like I said before, it's more interesting where the German word is something completely different. Actually, I'd just have to look up some of these words in a good Swedish dictionary to see what the dictionary say about their origin. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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