What language is most similar to English... Dutch? Norwegian?

Question

If you just looked at a map, you would guess that Calais, France would have the most closely related speech - it's so close to Dover.

Wondering what language you feel has the most overlap in pronunciation and diction. Especially interested in the opinion of people who actually know Dutch, German or Norwegian.

And yes, "American English" I know. But seriously ...

I have serious doubts that German is closer to English than Dutch. While all three are "Germanic" languages, to my ear Dutch sounds less different. The Dutch "R" sound is almost identical to English, for example.

Thanks all, but does anyone here actually *know* these languages? Again, it seems pretty clear if you have ever spent time around people from all three countries that German is no the best lanuage. Also, as I understand it, the grammar is further away from English than Norweigian - verbs at the ends of sentences all the time, etc.

Sorry! By "best language" I meant "closest language to English" :-) Didn't mean to insult anyone!

This is hopeless. There is tons of overlap between Norweigian, Swedish and English. Just leaf through a dictionary (I happen to have one right here). At least 1/4 of the words are basically the same.

Man = man
Hund = dog
Kat = cat
ar = are
Vi = we
Varfor = why ( "where for" in old English )

Thanks, all! Especially Taivo - interesting! I'm heading off to google for "Frisian" now :-)

Thanks so much everyone who mentioned "Frisian" ... I had no previous knowledge of this culture whatsoever! Very interesting to me.

If anyone else is interested, there's a little segment on youtube about them here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmf4ltaVRHk

Answer 1

Of those languages you mentioned, Dutch is the closest. It is considered the closest of any of the major languages, in fact. A minor language which is actually closer to English is Frisian, a language spoken by about 300,000 people in northern Holland and the outlying Frisian Islands.

Joe

Answer 2

Dutch and German are quite different. They look nothing alike in print, do not sound the same and are certainly not mutually intelligible; (without prior exposure to the other.) This is not true of Romance languages. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, all derived from Latin, share much mutual comprehensibility and reading one with fluency in another is relatively simple. English evolved on an island in the U.K., and therefore, is quite unique. There really is no other language that is close enough where one can make heads or tails out of another in basic conversation. Unlike Danish and Norwegian, Spanish and Portuguese, Polish and Czech, etc.

Answer 3

This is not "hopeless". You see so much similarity between a Scandinavian dictionary and English because they are both Germanic languages and because the spelling system of Scandinavian languages is structured in some of the same ways that the English spelling system is structured. Once you know the spelling conventions, you will find a lot more similarity between Dutch and English than between any Scandinavian language and English. That doesn't mean that English and Scandinavian languages are not close. Indeed, the Germanic languages descend from a common ancestor only about 2500-3000 years ago. That's not very long in a linguistic sense. All the Germanic languages are close to each other. The West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, Frisian) are a little more closely related and were one language about 2000 years ago.

Indeed, the closest related language to English is Frisian, but finding any Frisian language materials on the web (or in most libraries) is next to impossible. Dutch is therefore the closest language that you are likely to find materials on.

It is common for people to say that English is a "mixed bag" or that English is derived from "German". These are both ignorant statements. The most widely used vocabulary of English is about 85% Germanic. And English is GermanIC, not "German". German, Dutch, English, and Swedish all descend from a common ancestor Proto-Germanic, not from German.

Answer 4

English is in the Germanic language group which includes : English, German, Dutch and Afrikaans. These are the languages to which it is most closely related.

The North Germanic Group includes Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese.These are the next closest.

Most people here are just guessing. LOL

Answer 5

Dutch because that language arose from the same language as English

Answer 6

English is a bit of a mixed bag with influences from lots of languages. German is probably the biggest influence, athough there is a lot of french in there too. Dutch is sort of somewhere in between English and German and actually sounds quite similar to scots english. scots still uses the 'ch' sound, like clearing your throat, that german and dutch has, but the greater influence of french in england has all but wiped that out in the south. of course english also has latin influences from roman times, some norse from the Viking settlements on the east coast of UK but not much, mailny in place names and such. Norwegian/Swedeish is quite different from english, not much crossover except in the north of scotland which used to be part of norway way back. but the words that are Norse origin are genarally seen more as slang. its an interesting subject though.

Answer 7

I do not "know" any of these 3 languages, but Dutch and German are so similar in so many ways.
English is fairly well in a language group by itself. Although modern English derived from German...supposedly some of the Saxons left Germany because they wanted their children to have a simpler language than German...English is 60% based upon Latin. Not enough to make it a Romance Language, but enough to separate it from Swiss, German, Austrian, Dutch, etc.
Norwegian is a Scandinavian language, meaning it has much more in common with Swedish, Danish and Finnish.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family

Answer 8

it is infact German. I am a senior in high school and have taken German freshman sophmore and junior year. I was gonna take it this year too but the teacher retired and they got rid of the language at school. I am going to major in German in college. Anyways the German teacher did tell us German was msot like English.

Answer 9

I think its German.

Answer 10

i always thought german was