Cyberus wrote:
Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
ah yes, many English or American or whatsoever English speaking often confuse German with Dutch
Well, they are closely related, so I suppose it isn't too difficult a mistake to make.
Well, if a German speaks a bit too fast to me, I can't understand it. It's kinda as much related to Dutch as English.
In Dutch, there tend to be Ks where in German there are CHs.
e.g. ik spreek Engels (if I recall correctly?)
whereas in German its something like Ich Sprech[ending?]
The Dutch phrase was perfect. The German is: Ich Spreche Englisch.
Plus German uses that funny letter for the double S [what's that letter called again?].
Ringel-S
And also you don't have the umlaut in Dutch do you?
we do use the umlaut in Dutch, for instance: reëel (means tangible). It's meant to seperate consonants (or was it vowels? I always mix up these two) for pronouncing.
More Dutch words are similar to English words - like I noticed in health warnings on Belgian tobacco only yesterday, the Dutch word for heart is 'hart' (?) and you word for stop is very similar/the same(?), whereas the German is not so easy to recongise.
stop(pen) is also German.. but yes, to understand German, you can also compare it with Archaic English words (in my case, Dutch words). It's the same with Dutch-English
Also, I'm not sure about this one, but German seems to have some very long compound words, where Dutch doesn't have such long words [I think!]
Well, Dutch put often words together: I mean, Speelgoedmannetje -> Speelgoed - mannetje (means: toy-midget), so Dutch words can become pretty long (sometimes up to three or even four words put together)
