How Similar are German and Dutch?

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I'm Dutch but the hardest part about learning German is that a lot of words sound similar but have totally different meanings.

Dutch: "Wat hangt er aan de waslijn?" Germans: "Was?!" Dutch: In case you haven't noticed you've fallen right into my trap

English speaker who's learnt German. When I was in the Netherlands I found it so easy to read. But as soon as someone spoke to me I was lost

As a South Afrikan, Dutch is intelligible and sounds like just another dialect of Afrikaans

when i was 6 years old i was on a vacation in italy. i met a 6-7 year old dutch boy there and we both got really close friends in the 2 weeks we both stayed. the thing was that he just spoke dutch to me and i answered in my german dialect (luxembourgish). until i was a teenager i never knew that he spoke another language, i just thought hes a little bit "stupid" in talking. he probably thought the same about me. somehow both of us could communicate and always get what the other one wants to do right now. nice memories!

English man: "What do u do for a living?" Dutch man: "I fok horses" English man: "Pardon?" Dutch man: "Yeah paarden"

I am Dutch. At my first class of German, my teacher said: “German is an easy language, because it is so similar to Dutch. But German is also very difficult because there are so many differences with Dutch”. Now, I sometimes work with German people. The Dutch speak Dutch and the Germans speak German and we understand each other. Talking eachothers language is too hard to have a proper discussion…

As a Norwegian who moved to Germany as a teenager, I now realise that it would probably have been easier for me to learn Dutch than German. There are also a lot more similar words in Dutch (to Norwegian) than in German.

German: Was ist das? Dutch: Wat is dat? English: What is that?

I can see why Dutch people speak English so well. Their language seems to be half way between English and German.

As a native English speaker, who learned German as something between a native language and a second language (I basically can't translate german to english for love nor money, because i didn't learn it in an academic setting, but from my mom/family in germany, just... not as a baby/small child, but as a young teenager) I find Dutch FASCINATING because i can understand it SO WELL. It helps that my Opa spoke Platt and my family is all firmly in the low german dialectical areas of germany, but Dutch is WAY easier to understand than any of the high german or alemannic dialects to me.

Living in Germany as a Dutchman I am very used to both langueses. easy to say, most Dutch understand German, but only a few German understand Dutch. May be also education, there in the Netherlands, German is the third languages that is educated.

Wow. I'm a native German speaker and I just realised how COMPLICATED it would be to learn german.

My Favorite false cognate is "Ik/Ich komm klar". In german its "i`m fine/i can deal with it (by myself)" in dutch it is "i have an orgasm"

As a German, Dutch sounds like a crazy mix between German and English when you hear it :D It's an interesting language indeed and when I'm finished with the work we have currently in our company, I might start to learn it.

As a German I find it pretty easy to understand written Dutch. Or at least the general gist of it. A bunch of words are close enough that I'm at least capable of understanding the meaning. Doesn't work always as both languages share a bunch of false friends - words that sound very, very similar, but have a total different meaning. Spoken Dutch is a completely different animal though. Usually I can't follow a conversation except some odd words that are clear enough to understand. A colleague of mine who was born in the Netherlands has been in Germany for more than 30 years and he experienced the same vice versa. The solution is quite simple - both Dutch and Germans usually just switch to English ;) Tot ziens!

I'm a retired teacher of French and Italian, and have studied a great deal of Dutch I find your videos superb: clear, scholarly but very easy to follow. Wonderful work.

I'm Dutch and I have never learned German in school, but I do understand German 100%. I learned german just by watching a lot of German tv in my childhood.

Ik this won't get read and I'm several years late, but I'm a native speaker of Dutch. I have a friend who speaks Geman, and I sometimes hear him having conversations with his family. I can understand some words or the concept of what's being discussed, but not fully understand it. It would take me a little bit of time to understand a piece of written German.