What's the connection between German and Dutch?

Question

Language wise. My uncle is a native Dutch and I speak German (not native). When we have conversations, he speaks Dutch and I speak German, we both basicly understand each other, but when he writes me in Dutch I don't understand at all?

Answer 1

See the connection in Dutch-Deutch. They are the same family, but split off, much as French, Spanish, and Romanian split off from Latin. Thus, there are enough similarities in one area to still understand but enough changes in another area to not understand. Shoot, parts of Dutch even sound like English. The same thing happened in Chinese. The most common language, Mandarin, and the third most common language, Cantonese, use the same letters but are VERY differently pronounced. They are both Chinese, by the way.

Answer 2

Most Dutch people can understand German but the reverse is not true. I was on holidays with Austrian friends in Holland and we took the train and piece of cake they said but impossible to understand the Dutch announcements LOL Anyway, German has a lot of difficult grammar and Dutch is very much straightforward as long as you are Dutch. The point really is which language do you actually need? It is easier for a Dutch speaker to learn German than for a German speaker to learn Dutch.

Answer 3

Dutch and german had fought many wars during the 1800's.
There r many other languages which is similar but they r different while writing. I think to have privacy for their country they did that.

Answer 4

northern Europe