orion Senior Member United States Joined 7020 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 9 of 17 03 December 2005 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
ferdi wrote:
however when i see Scandinavian soccer players come to The Netherlands they always speak perfect Dutch in less then a year, so i guess English is easier but Dutch is not far behind .
p.s. as you can see in the Collaborative writing there are a Swedish and a Dutch profile it just isn't lounched yet with the other profiles on the site i don't know why.
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That is very interesting. Someone once said that if English had not had the French influence a thousand years ago that Dutch and English would be mutually intelligible today.
I did see that Swedish and Dutch profiles are under construction. I look forward to the day they are launched. Its too bad that these fascinating languages are often overlooked by English speakers shopping for another language. I think part of it is that we feel a bit embarassed that Dutch and Swedish people speak English as good (if not better) than we do! Most of these folks sound completely native. Sometimes the only tip-off is an unusual sentence construction or word choice.
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Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7103 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds
| Message 10 of 17 03 December 2005 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
orion wrote:
Its too bad that these fascinating languages are often overlooked by English speakers shopping for another language. |
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I've noticed that quite a bit. It seems the fact that not too many (at least not that I'm aware of) people speak Dutch and Scandinavian languages outside of their respective country. Also, with the English speakers in the States, being close to Canada and Mexico with French and Spanish spoken, that likely contributes to them being overlooked somewhat as well.
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Susanka Newbie Finland Joined 6924 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes
| Message 11 of 17 09 December 2005 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
I am fluent in Swedish, and I used to do a bit of Dutch, which I found very easy.. it's also a very interesting language I must say :)
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orion Senior Member United States Joined 7020 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 12 of 17 09 December 2005 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
Do you see very many Swedish people in Finland that speak Finnish? What about Russians? Everything I have read says Finnish is quite difficult.
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Eddard Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6753 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC1, German, Swedish Studies: French, Italian
| Message 13 of 17 19 June 2006 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
I'm Dutch and I have taught myself Swedish. I had a five years-experience with German at school, but this wasn't really an advantage, while learning Swedish. Some words in Swedish look like some German words, but the difference is just too big; the vocabulary is quite different and the German grammar is far more complicated (cases, many rules and just as many exceptions), than Swedish grammar, which is quite easy for speakers of any other Germanic language.
It's not posible for a Dutch person to understand any written or spoken Swedish, without having a basic knowledge of the vocabulary. However, knowing the basis will make you able to guess many Swedish words that you haven't seen before in the coursebook.
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Pibende Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6724 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Dutch
| Message 14 of 17 27 June 2006 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
A few Dutch words are more similar to their Danish (and presumably Nordic - I haven't studied the other two) counterparts than to the equivalent German:
English:
always, entire, shall (3rd person singular)
Dutch:
altijd, hele, zal
German:
immer, ganz, wird
Danish:
altid, hele, skal
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Eddard Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6753 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC1, German, Swedish Studies: French, Italian
| Message 15 of 17 28 June 2006 at 9:36am | IP Logged |
But on the other hand:
English important
Dutch belangrijk
German wichtig
Swedish viktig
English glad
Dutch blij
German froh
Swedish glad
English disappear
Dutch verdwijnen
German verschwinden
Swedish försvinna
English tends to use Latin vocabulary far more often than the other Germanic languages.
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Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7187 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin
| Message 16 of 17 28 June 2006 at 1:08pm | IP Logged |
Does Dutch have regular, predictable stress, or does its location need to be memorized along with the word like in English?
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