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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
185 points nalinidash | 1 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.24s | source
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chilldsgn ◴[16 May 25 06:07 UTC] No.44002271[source]▶
I absolutely love German, it is one of my favourite languages, there's such beauty in it. I am not a native speaker, but enjoy studying it. I am a native Afrikaans speaker and I see so many similarities between the two, which I find intriguing.
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bradley13 ◴[16 May 25 06:13 UTC] No.44002292[source]▶
Don't tell the people in the Netherlands and Belgium, but Dutch is a German dialect with pretensions, and Afrikaans is a Dutch dialect, so...
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patates ◴[16 May 25 06:33 UTC] No.44002377[source]▶
I can speak English and German which makes me able to somewhat understand written Dutch (especially if I know the context), but no chance when it's spoken.
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1. snovymgodym ◴[16 May 25 16:31 UTC] No.44007346[source]▶
Knowing English and German also makes it possible to understand something like 50-75% of written Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish in my experience.

Apparently a part of this is due to a huge number of Low-German loanwords present in all three due to the influence of the Hanseatic league in the region during the middle ages.