Good news, right? An important characteristic of Swedish grammar that makes is different from English is the placement of the definite article after the noun. However, its vocabulary contains many loanwords from German, French, and English. Make the most of it! The story started back in the 15th century after the union of Norway with Denmark. Then, in , Norway became independent, and although the linguistic union with Danish persisted, the people felt they needed a language of their own.
This is what makes it obviously easier to learn by a native English speaker. These languages use the same alphabet as English, have comparable stress and intonation patterns, and sometimes even share some vocabulary words.
As a result, the Afrikaans language gradually arose in the Dutch Cape Colony during the course of the 18th century. With around 24 million speakers, Dutch is the third most widely spoken Germanic language — the first two being English and German — and the official language of the Netherlands and Belgium together with French and German. Careful though!
The spoken language of Dutch is tricky as it has many dialects. While Standard Dutch is used for official purposes, its dialects are used in a great variety of informal situations. For a native or not English speaker such as yourself, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish are practically just as easy to learn for you as the Germanic languages.
Danish is also flatter and more monotonous than English. Grammatically, though, it's relatively easy. Why is Holland called the Netherlands? Over time, Holland, among English speakers, came to apply to the entire country, though it only refers to two provinces—the coastal North and South Holland—in the Netherlands today. Is Denmark a Germanic country? Independent European countries whose population are predominantly native speakers of a Germanic language: Austria.
Can a Dutch person understand German? Dutch is as effective at encrypting communication from German speakers as French is. Is Danish like German? Danish is Germanic, but a totally different branch from German, Dutch or English. That said, the grammar is really easy. Danish is a North Germanic language, descended from Old Norse. I'm told that speakers of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish can understand each other fairly well.
Can German speakers understand Danish? As for the spoken languages, it's all about exposure. I know native Danish speakers who understand either Norwegian or Swedish or both with no problems while others who really struggle. German shares some words with Danish, however the grammar has many more differences to Danish than the other languages I've mentioned. Can English speakers understand Danish? Norwegian speaker understand written Swedish and spoken Danish extremely well.
So to start, Norwegian is the best bet. Native English speakers will find that they're very comfortable with the grammatical structure of these languages. Privacy policy. Remote teaching. Hybrid courses. Open Days. Plan your route on Google Maps.
As a Dane, I felt very much at home, as the Netherlands and Denmark have quite a lot in common: lots of rain, people on bikes wearing practical clothes, rather direct and informal interaction with others, and a non-authoritarian way of bringing up their children. However today, a few years later, I believe that in some ways the two countries are deceptively similar — looking past the surface I have noticed many small and surprising differences.
This is also the case when I look at the Dutch language from a Danish point of view. Dutch is reassuringly familiar Well, first I had to get past the pronunciation of the Dutch language. Danish is a somewhat 'flat' language, so in the beginning all I could hear were the — to my ears — harsh sounds of the Dutch gs, rs, schs, etc.
Still, I did grow used to that after a while and started to hear the actual words. Then I found that reading Dutch is much easier. Danish and Dutch have many similar words. For example, the words bloemkool, pastinak, lekker, kantine, betalen, overmorgen, etc. Dutch and Danish sentence structures are also very much alike, making them easier to comprehend than when looking at them from an English-speaking perspective, for example.
Similarly, some language concepts are very much alike in Dutch and Danish, such as numbers — eenentwintig enogtyve in Danish , zestien seksten , honderd hundrede — or telling the time — kwart over vier kvart over fire , half drie halv tre , vijf over half twee fem over halv to. All in all, these similarities made it comparatively easy for me to learn to read Dutch just by using everyday, convenient means, like reading Dutch subtitles while watching my favourite sitcoms on TV, recipes in food magazines, menus at restaurants, and even the lists of ingredients on supermarket products.
Dutch is totally incomprehensible! I find that as I am confidently reading my Dutch texts, I suddenly stumble upon a word which is completely different and, to me, totally incomprehensible — not to mention very difficult to pronounce, like the Dutch words lichaam, mooi, erg, graag, nooit, leuk, buiten , etc.
The list is long. Further, identical words in Dutch and Danish have totally different meanings, adding to the confusion.
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