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Which Germanic language after German? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6110 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 9 of 13 21 November 2009 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't say Danish is particularly hard to pronounce. It's a bit difficult to understand at first in its spoken form due to a certain tendency to slur things together, but as far as the sounds themselves go, I'd say say that those of Danish would actually be rather more familiar to someone who speaks both German and English than those of Swedish or Norwegian. Edited by Rameau on 22 November 2009 at 7:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5577 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 13 21 November 2009 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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My plan is Dutch, although I'm still working on my German. Was your plan to 'conquer' all the Germanic languages, like Prof. Arguelles? In that case the question is which to tackle first. My thinking was English and German are two ends of a spectrum, with Dutch somewhat in-between. So it'd be relatively easy, and probably most efficient to do right after the jump from English->German. Then I was going to tackle the Scandinavian languages.
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| elbereth Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5491 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Latin | Message 11 of 13 22 November 2009 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes,maaku,I had thought of Dutch at first for that reason.I would not consider myself fluent in German; though I do have some knowledge.Aaah,the plan to conquer them all:) I wondered whether it was a little too ambitious.Is it? Hmm,do many have this ambition?:) I am attracted to Icelandic for its closeness to ancient language and it not having changed as much as the others.With the scandinavian languges,perhaps Norwegian then is a compromise of the three? 80% was said earlier,I will look back at that post.
From what people have said about Danish and then Swedish being rather difficult for a native speaker,I think so.Am I correct in this? Literature is a big consideration for me,it is why I pick up things through reading and writing mostly,I love reading(in English,a little foreign literature at least for now).Travel is a reason after that(yes for peace and quiet-I dislike hot and tourist areas,like many places in Spain) if opportunity comes.So,a plan of Dutch,Norwegian then Icelandic sounds good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| koffiegast Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5463 days ago 29 posts - 33 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 13 21 December 2009 at 2:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Dutch is really easy if you know both German and English. Dutch does conjugate for person on verbs, but it doesn't have cases like German. The word order is also comparable to English (or German in relative clauses I believe), basically you could translate word for word and it will be fine in most cases. Pronunciation of English/German/French words are mostly retained in Dutch too (the word 'goal' is an example).
Only possible bottlenecks can be: memorizing de/het, word order becomes really complex in some cases(probably similar to English/German), pronunciation of u, ui, au/ou (if you know German, you can probably pronounce uu/u, eu, ie/i, au/ou), the 'g' (comparable to German in some cases) and the a/aa distinction (Swedish got it too). Icelandic/Danish/Swedish/Norwegian probably have all comparable features. With English/German it shouldn't be too hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 13 21 December 2009 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Dutch is very easy to read, knowing German and English. It's a bit harder to understand (regional variation in pronunciation can make it surprisingly difficult at first). Speaking and writing it properly is much harder; it's amazingly easy to throw in Anglicisms, or borrow too much from German. The same is true with the other Germanic languages (a bit less with Icelandic), but Dutch seems so much easier to become confused with, for some reason. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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