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We're now focusing on the similarities but there is of course also a long list of words that are completely different in German, Dutch and English. From the top of my head, here are a few examples I can think of just concerning food/eating:
[German - Dutch - English]
Sahne - room - cream
Sahne is (at least traditionally) Rahm in Southern Germany and Switzerland and apparently also in western Austria.
Is Swiss German even mutually intelligible with High German? Even though my knowledge of German is limited, I can hear a very clear difference, the sound of Swiss German almost sounds like Dutch sometimes to my ears
No we are conversing in English which even ordinary folk from Detroit can understand I was thinking conversing in more exclusive languages like German & Dutch!
Well, from my experience it appears Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible, but considering that Afrikaans is nothing else than a 16th century simplified Dutch it's nothing surprising really. Also, Dutch and Low German are very very closely related and therefore mutually intelligible to a certain degree. Dutch and [standard] German are partially mutually intelligible, but this intelligibility is mostly limited to written language.
I won't even go into the differences like ""die""", ""der"" , ""das"" with ""Austrian"" German
To be fair, there are not many specialities in Austrian German when it comes to articles. And most of them even sound odd to me. I mean, "der Butter"? What the hell?
Is Swiss German even mutually intelligible with High German? Even though my knowledge of German is limited, I can hear a very clear difference, the sound of Swiss German almost sounds like Dutch sometimes to my ears
Hard to tell. It's probably impossible to understand for someone who grew up in a Standard German only environment. But most people grew up listening to some sort of dialect and you usually get somewhat creative when interpreting a dialect you are not completely used to.
Plus, the dialect of Swiss television is still pretty okay. There are dialects way worse than that spoken in some rural areas in Switzerland
But yeah, there are actually lots of German dialects you can't understand when you are not from that particular region. Some Swiss German, some from Vorarlberg and Tyrolean dialects come to my mind.
I thought that English (like a lot of other languages) was not any particular 'type' of language but a mix of Latin, German, French, Scandinavian, Celtic etc? I know there are many similar English words to German but isn't there also many English words similar to say Spanish? Aren't all english words that end tion exactly the same as the Spanish words apart from in Spanish they end cion? eg tradition / tradicion, exception / excepcion, conversation / conversacion (there are many). Also Isn't there Latin in just about all European languages? Of course being English I am afraid I am no expert on the matter of languages!!
I thought that English (like a lot of other languages) was not any particular 'type' of language but a mix of Latin, German, French, Scandinavian, Celtic etc? I know there are many similar English words to German but isn't there also many English words similar to say Spanish? Aren't all english words that end tion exactly the same as the Spanish words apart from in Spanish they end cion? eg tradition / tradicion, exception / excepcion, conversation / conversacion (there are many). Also Isn't there Latin in just about all European languages? Of course being English I am afraid I am no expert on the matter of languages!!
English is one of the West Germanic languages. To avoid confusion, dont confuse the word German with Germanic, they are 2 different things and German is just one of the Germanic languages, infact, in other languages Germany is called Deutschland, Tyskland, Alemagne etc, it is only in English they have named it "Germany".
There is of course other Germanic languages, that is Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian etc and you can find similarities with English in all of them. The English grammar and structure for example is more similar to the Scandinavian langauges (Swedish, Danish etc) than German, and the Scandinavian languages are Germanic.
There is lots of Romance influences and loan words in other Germanic languages as well except the isolated languages Icelandic and Faroese. But influences and loan words does not change the language group it belongs to. The common ancestor of all Germanic languages including English is Proto-Germanic.
The Germanic languages originated from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany, infact the major part of Germany was NOT a part of the Proto-Germanic area. It later spread across northern and western Europe and evolved into languages such as Old West Norse, Old East Norse, Old German, Old Dutch, Old Frisian, and of course, Old English, which set grounds for the modern versions of these languages. The old versions looks nothing like the modern versions, but they are the origin of it all.
The Anglo-Saxons who created the country of England and set grounds for the English language came from southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. Like other Germanic languages, there has been lots of Latin/Romance influence on the English language through the years.
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