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Dutch & German - Just How Similar? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 1 of 37 02 June 2010 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've become rather smitten with the German language of late, and I'm becoming quite interested in learning it.
It's getting harder to ignore the vast amount of history, literature, science and music which has come from the German people through out the centuries, and knowing the language would be such a great thing to have in order to read some brilliant minds such as Hesse, Goethe, Jung and Nietzsche etc. So I was wondering, as I have been studying Dutch for the past 6-8 months or so, how similar are these two languages grammatically? Are there many exceptions and differences between them? And does either one have some grammatical features that the other doesn't? I'm always reading about how everyone finds German to be an extremelly expressive and well constructed language, yet I never here this about Dutch, so I'm guessing there must be many more differences between the two besides the way they sound. If any one speaks both these languages and would be able to share their thoughts on this, it would be very much appreciated. Many thanks, Vos 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 37 02 June 2010 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I only speak a little German but I know from experience that the grammar is more difficult than that of Dutch because of the cases and thee genders. Dutch only has two genders and no cases at all so that makes it easier.
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| Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5309 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 37 02 June 2010 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German is the most complex Germanic language. Over the centuries, it has retained many grammatical features that other Germanic languages have abandoned (e.g. cases).
On the grammatical complexity continuum it is more or less like this: English --> Dutch --> German I don't know much about Dutch, but knowing German, I understand a great deal of Dutch vocabulary. You will find the German vocabulary very familiar as well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 37 02 June 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have studied German for maybe 3 1/2 years, off and on, and have studied Dutch a little here and there, but am just seriously studying it this summer.
I have several friends from Germany and the Netherlands, and many of the Dutch friends "claim" that they could understand German fairly well, whereas the German friends all seemed to believe that German and Dutch were so different, that one could not understand them. It may be a cultural thing, I am not sure, but just a pattern I noticed among some of my European friends. After studying German for awhile, I began to notice that I could understand quite a lot of written Dutch, since there is a large amount of shared vocabulary. The pronunciation is sometimes quite different though, which makes it harder to understand when listening, unless the programme or speech is slowed down. Regarding grammar, I've noticed that Dutch grammar is much more simple than German grammar. Besides minor differences, I believe there may be some bigger differences as well, here and there (just from what I have noticed in some Dutch articles I have glanced over), although I am not 100% positive on this one. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Slovak_anglo Diglot Groupie United States facebook.com/deliver Joined 5346 days ago 87 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Slovak | Message 5 of 37 02 June 2010 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German does have some very interesting literature. I have never studied Dutch, but one thing that would be different would be the genders
in Dutch you have (de, het) and in German you have(der, die, das) The only other thing I can think of is that Dutch's cases are all the same(as in it always stays de or het), whereas in German there are four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive) That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are some Dutch/German speakers that can help you out on this. S_A By the way does anyone know why it says Studies: Studies: on Vos' profile thing on the side? Edited by patuco on 02 June 2010 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| NativeLanguage Octoglot Groupie United States nativlang.com Joined 5339 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes Speaks: French, Spanish, English*, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, Catalan Studies: Japanese, Mayan languages, Irish | Message 6 of 37 02 June 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've studied both of these languages, but do not speak either too well. I can give a brief linguistic perspective on the two languages.
>>how similar are these two languages grammatically? Are there many exceptions and differences between them? And does either one have some grammatical features that the other doesn't? Morphology (word grammar) Dutch has lost many grammatical features that German retains. The retention of German noun cases is among the most obvious examples. German nouns have four separate cases (although many of these no longer show up as distinct suffixes in the modern language), while Dutch no longer has formal case. Wikipedia has a brief overview of the Dutch loss of cases throughout its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_declension. In fact, early Dutch nouns worked a lot like German nouns. Dutch verbs have fewer inflected forms than their German counterparts, but the difference isn't as striking as with nouns. Apart from the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperative, Dutch tense/moods are formed with helping verbs. German works this way, too. For instance, both Dutch and German have a formal past tense ('ich sage' 'I say' -> 'ich sagte' 'I said'), but speakers tend to use the auxiliary construction 'ich habe gesagt' 'I have said' instead. Dutch and German pronouns have subject, object and possessive forms, but Dutch pronouns fail to distinguish between indirect and direct objects (like German 'mich' 'me'/'mir' 'to me'). Syntax (sentence structure) Both Dutch and German are "V2 languages", meaning that finite verbs come second in a main clause. This is true even when other material, like pronouns, must move to keep the verb in second position: German Ich gehe nach Hause. Dutch Ik ga naar huise. I go to house 'I'm going home.' Heute gehe ich nach Hause. Vandaag ga ik naar huis. today go I to house 'Today I'm going home.' Both Dutch and German exhibit 'Subject + auxiliary VERB + OBJECT + infinitive' word order in helping/modal verb constructions: Ich bin nach Hause gegangen. Ik ben naar huis gegaan. I am to house gone 'I went home.' I've focused on similarities and differences above, but you mentioned 'exceptions'. From my reading, this implies that we're considering rules that could allow us to transform Dutch sentences to German ones. Despite the glaring similarities and immense amount of shared material between the two languages, such rules would be complex. Exceptions would be instances where those rules fail to produce good German sentences, so, yes, you would find many of these as you worked out the details of your grammar (= rule set). Also, my observations are limited to Standard German and Standard Dutch. German, especially, exhibits a ton of variation in its patchwork of dialects. For instance, expect to find many more similarities between Meuse-Rhenish and Dutch than Standard German and Dutch. >> I'm always reading about how everyone finds German to be an extremely expressive and well constructed language, yet I never here this about Dutch This is going into non-linguistic territory, so I'll keep my answer short. What are the criteria for calling a language "extremely expressive"? I can't imagine there are many things a German speaker can express that a Dutch speaker couldn't, and vice versa, so perhaps there are other criteria I'm not seeing. Part of this claim may be due to the prestige status accorded German as a former lingua franca and in academia. It's worth scrutinizing whether this has anything to do with the grammar or structure of the language. Would the same people consider rural Low German dialects more expressive than Standard Dutch, since their structure is closer to Standard German? If not, why not? If you can find a copy of Bauer & Trudgill's Language Myths, that book includes an article by Anthony Lodge titled "French is a Logical Language", which offers an introductory linguistic perspective questioning whether some languages are inherently better than others. >>I'm guessing there must be many more differences between the two besides the way they sound I answered the "differences...besides the way they sound" very briefly above. But back up for a moment to when you considered the way they sound, and stop focusing on the differences for a minute. If we look for similarities, we can see underlying correspondences. If we travel back in time, German and Dutch begin to look more and more similar. Far enough back, and they merge into one single language. Sound correspondences can help you understand the development of Dutch vs. the development of German, but also their common heritage as branches of the same tree (or, really, sub-branches of the same branch!). Take the simple example of the word 'was' (German) vs. 'wat' (Dutch). Looking at other words, we find many with 's(s)' in German that have Dutch counterparts with 't' (dat/das, weet/weiss, eten/essen, etc.). Moreover, comparing other Germanic languages (like English 'what'), we find that German changed final -t to -s, while Dutch retains final -t. We now have a correspondence: when Dutch words end in -t, expect their German cognates to end in -s(s). Based on sets like eten/essen, we can extend the correspondence: Dutch -t = German -s(s); Dutch -t- = German -ss-. Looking at sounds that way, you're apt to find a ton of correspondences that will help understand the pronunciation of each language individually, but also the relationship between both languages. 21 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 7 of 37 03 June 2010 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you all for your replys.
This may seem like a silly question, but I've never been completely certain in knowing what this means. What exactly is cases? After looking at the websites that Nativelanguage suggested, are cases when a noun adds extra parts to itself to indicate an additional piece of information? Edited by Vos on 03 June 2010 at 12:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 37 03 June 2010 at 1:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Icelandic is a good deal more conservative and complex than German. Other than that, largely true.
Yes. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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