Do the Dutch Speak German? | Easy Dutch 20

I love that Dutch is easier for me to understand than the German spoken in Switzerland 😂 congratulations to the team of Easy Dutch from an Italian living in Germany

That lady who said her German lessons were ages ago: her German was almost flawless! She didn't remember the dative case "wem", but so what, many Germans don't. Ah, education! :)

Came here from Easy German to see, out of curiosity, how much can I understand and it's actually quite a lot. Being fluent in both English and German does help a lot. 👌

Dutch always sounds cute to me. Also I love the way more positive and optimistic persona of our neighbors. Much love from Germany 🇩🇪

I'm an older man from Curaçao in the Caribbean. My mother tongue is Papiamento. I grew up hearing and speaking a lot of Dutch, Spanish and English. In school we had to speak Dutch. I remember how at first German was completely incomprehensible to me. When I was 17 I went to study in Holland. There you only had 2 Dutch and 3 German channels on TV in the early 70s. All foreign films were dubbed in German on the these German channels. It is by watching TV that I eventually learned to understand the language and even speak broken German. Popular music was not a completely anglophone domain when I was young. I remember singing Papiamento, Spanish, English, French, German and Italian popular tunes in the 60s. Udo Jürgens' "Du" was a hit song. I could sing every word of it even though I didn't understand much of what I sang. "Je t'aime was a very popular French song by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. I could sing every word. It was a very erotic song. I could tell by the girl's moaning. But what did my 15 year old self know about eroticism. At the time cinema wasn't all Hollywood. There was a solid European film industry. Even British film was distinctly different to Hollywood. I think growing up in a multilingual popular culture facilitated my learning all these languages. Even if imperfectly so.

As a dutch person, it's easy to speak faulty German but actual German can be quite hard

When I first visited the Netherlands in 1961 without knowing the language, I thought at first I would be better understood if I spoke German rather than English. But when I spoke in German, everyone glared fiercely at me and insisted I speak English. One old man whom I asked "Do you speak English?" looked amused and replied. "Perhaps better than you." I am amazed now that the Germans have regained a good reputation in the Netherlands, coming as I do from the generation who grew up during WW2.

German and Dutch have just 25% difference in the first 5000 most frequent words (they cover 85-90% of any text), which is pretty close. Dutch and English differ to the extent of 37% in this respect, German and English — to the extent of 49%. The closest European languages, like Swedish & Danish & Norwegian, or Czech & Slovak, or Ukrainian & Belarusian, have a distance of 14-16% between their TOP-5000 frequency words. Source image: Tyshchenko Kostiantyn, lexical distances of European languages (a diagram)

I, as a German, learned dutch in school since I come from North Rhine Westfalia. Here, it is more common to learn it than in any other part of Germany I would say. Whenever I'm in the Netherlands I try to order my food in dutch or just talk to people BUT I have to say that there are only 2 reactions when it comes to me trying to talk dutch: the dutch people either are SUPER nice or SUPER critical, there is no in between. I found that kinda sad since I'm really trying my best!

I was born in East Frisia and I understand almost everything, because low german is very very similar to dutch! 🇩🇪😊❤️🇳🇱

I love the netherlands so much. Beautiful infrastructure, cities and beloved people. An amazing country here in Europe. Love from Germany.

Ich spreche Deutsch, aber bin nicht niederländisch, sondern flämisch. Ich habe die deutsche Sprache ins Gymnasium gelernt. Das war für mich sehr einfach, da es viele ähnliche Wörter und grammatische Strukturen gibt.

As a German, I always thought dutch was easy to understand for me. This Video changed my mind.

Am a native English speaker who lives in Germany and speaks German to a high level. I found spoken Dutch really hard to understand but written was ok as it's completely different pronunciation. I got an A1 Dutch book aimed at German speakers and since using that, I find even spoken Dutch ok to follow. Once you get used to the pronunciation and rhythm it gets much easier...of course the grammar is different, but if you can speak English and German then there aren't many surprises in there that'll catch you out :) I'll likely never speak it beyond bare basic conversations with travellers as the Dutch almost always speak impeccable English, better than us natives sometimes!

I'm from Germany and I understand most of what is said with the help of the dutch subtitles. This actually came s a surprise since I never learnt dutch :D 😅

The woman at 1:50 is doing exactly what I am trying when I‘m in the Netherlands, just the other way around. I dutchize my german and usually it works out. Usually we understand eachother anyway if we speak slowly with eachother, the dutch and german speakers :)

Let me tell you this: I am German born and bred in this country. Whenever I am in Holland (that's what we call the Netherlands although this only covers a part of the country) I adress people in English as I feel talking to the natives in plain German is an insult as I would be assuming they need to understand me. The standard reaction is that people younger than 40 will respond in English while elderly people will indicate they don't understand what I am saying. That gives me the opportunity to switch to German to which those elderly folks will in most cases reply in German rusty though but we will get along. The point I am trying to make is us Germans are definitely the biggest power in Central Europe but nevertheless we have lessons to learn from our history and as I appreciate any effort to learn German as our language I do not expect any of our neighbours to communicate in my home tongue with me. If you - our neighbours - want to do that, I am delighted, if not just tell me how you want to talk to me. Me only predicament then will be - chose a method (language) I am able to deal with (no French I was a complete failure at school with this, can we use our hands please)

I love to listen to Dutch people speaking German - the accent is very nice - and their pronounciation is much better than they think.

I studied in Nijmegen at Radboud University! Omdat ek van Suid Afrika is kon ek vinning Nederlands leer. Maar, toe ek in Duitsland studeer (Humboldt Universiteit) was dit nie so maklik OM Duits te leer nie! Thanks for the great video!

Goeiemiddag ! Ik ben een Pool maar ik spreek vloeiend Nederlands, Duits en Engels. Ik zou graag Nederlands en Duits met jullie kletsen. Groetjes uit Duitsland!