Depends on how you measure relatedness. Dutch shares a more recent common ancestor with English, but English has borrowed so many Latinate words (mostly from French, but not solely from there) that it seems more different from Dutch than German does.
Also, keep in mind that Dutch and German form a pretty good Dialect Continuum. Low German (Plattdüütsch) is quite close to Dutch, and the two tend to blend into each other as one moves from The Netherlands into German.
Yeah, that was a screw up on my part. I speak Swedish, so I know about how to do a plural of the definite form of a noun in the Scandinavian languages. I just wasn’t paying attention to what I wrote.
(in case you are wondering, I chose Danish instead of Swedish for my example as I sometimes feel I talk about living here too often and I don’t want to end up like that defines me, like maybe it does some other people here…)
I’m currently entering some danish translations for our website and it is indeed quite similar. Something I hadn’t noticed listening to the language, maybe because the Danes have lost the ability to pronounce vowels.
But the written thing is close to dutch
German still ‘feels’ closer although they started to move away from proper pronounciation already in the 3rd/ 4th century with their silly consonant shifts.
You don’t know how sick I am of hearing the word ‘arbitrary’ when listening to lecturers/linguist speakers on this subject. But they’re right! The distinction between a language and a dialect is largely arbitrary. Trying to categorise it all just ends up in a battle of semantics.
well, we’re talking about old norman here, which was indeed very much a french-based language, but surely contained many more loan words and shared more structure with nordic languages than modern norman. much of it would have been unintelligible to speakers of french (though surely moreso to speakers of nordic languages), and one imagines anglo-norman might have facilitated communication between the normans in england (and those who adopted their language) and the nordic peoples they came into contact with. so, i contend that the nordic heritage of the normans could very well have slowed the decrease in influence the nordic languages had on english.
also: i was agreeing with you, and mostly just being glib.
regarding dutch and german: according to wikipedia (for what that’s worth), danish is a north germanic language having more in common with norse and swedish than either german or dutch. i don’t speak these languages (or even fully grasp the morphology of the scandinavian languages), so i can’t really provide much first-hand knowledge on the topic, but that was always my impression, anyway. does anyone have reason to believe wikipedia is wrong here?
No, they are right. See post #3 in this thread.
The similarity is more pronounced when written than in spoken language.
Due to perhaps some Dutch peasants that a Danish king in the early sixteen century imported to live in an area outside Copenhagen, Dutch was commonly understood in Copenhagen into the nineteenth century, which can be understood by reading Ludvig Holberg (E.g., a page of Holberg); but more broadly the similarity is due to Plattdüütsch (Plattysk) which had a big influence on Danish during the Middle Ages, so that today 40% of Danish is derived from Plattdüütsch.
Ah, I see that I didn’t waste my time getting this here Linguistics degree hanging on my wall.
By the way, you don’t know how tired I am of hearing “Semantics” used as an insult. I know you didn’t use it as such, but be patient, friend; it shall soon happen that someone else wanders into the thread and does such a thing.
By that definition, there’s only one Scandinavian language (or a multitude, depending on attitude). If we overlook the more - um - distinctive dialects (e.g. sønderjysk, skånsk or vossamål) and only consider the standardized languages, the three Scandinavian languages are definitely not non-intelligible between themselves. At least for a person of average intellect and good will. 
Bill Bryson writes in his book Mother Tongue that the closest primary root language for English, is spoken today on a Fresian island. I’ve always found that an interesting nugget.
Oh now you’ve done it. You had to go there, didn’t you?
@2square4u - you claim that Scandinavian is one language, only with a lot of dialects or accents. First of all, Scandinavian is not a language group. The language group is called Nordic, or North Germanic languages. Funny how you sound so confident, when you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are still intelligible and could linguistically be classified as dialects. In that case you might call the language Scandinavian. But what about Icelandic and Faroese? These languages are perhaps further away from Danish then Danish is from Dutch. Classification of language groups is not based on common intelligibility, but on similarity of core words, grammar and sentence structure.
This is also essential to the theory that Jan Terje Faarlund and Joseph Emmonds bring forth. Their argument is first of all based on similarity of sentence structure. I’m not a linguist, but I find it a bit strange how eager people are to ridicule the work of two highly esteemed lingusts without taking time to understand their arguments first.
I just heard Jan Terje Faarlund on Norwegian radio, and he explained the change from old to middle English (or from West Germanic to North Germanic) exactly by the Norman invasion. The rule of the Normans was so harsh and repressive, that it united the Scandinavian and English peasants, and this created a linguistic fusion of their languages. Because the Scandinavian peasants most likely were in majority at the time (between York in the north and London in the south), Norse or Nordic came to form the basis of the new language (Middle English). The vast amount of Scandinavian place names in this part of England points towards them being in majority in the region.
When it comes to the huge influx of French words, these never replaced the basics. If you look at the words describing people and nature in English, they are mostly of Germanic origin. The imported French words would mostly describe material things, such as furniture and clothing or more abstract or political terms, used by the court and the gentry. Claiming that English is just as much a Romance language as it is Germanic makes of course no sense. If you look at grammar and sentence structure, English is most defenitely Germanic, and perhaps even a Scandinavian language. To me at least, the theory sounds well supported.
Well, Frisia does border the lands of the Saxons, modern Saxony having nothing to do with the Saxons. So one would expect frisian to be close to saxon.
One should be aware of Frisians though. They are quite the nationalists and use their dialect to differentiate themselves from Holland. They have succeeded in having their dialect recognisied officialy as a seperate language.
As already stated the line between dialect and language is somewhat arbitrary with a grey inbetween border but frisian is not as different from dutch as Frisians would like. Once you get used to the few differently pronounced vowels, it’s just dutch. A Limburger or Zealander is just as difficult to understand at first as a Frisian.
In their zeal to emphasize their difference from Holland they tend to forget that Holland was once called West-Frisia. Hollanders are in fact Frisians.
No, I claim that if Spectre of Pithecanthropus’ definition of what constitutes different languages, that they have to be non-intelligible between themselves, is correct, then Norwegian, Swedish and Danish have to be one language. Either that, or I’m a language genius since I have no problems understanding neither Swedish nor Danish (provided, of course, that we’re dealing with the standardized languages rather than thick dialects). Since the latter option (me being a language genius) is quite unlikely, it’s quite clear that what are defined as two different languages don’t have to be non-intelligible between themselves.
Would you care to elaborate on why I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? I’m mildly curious, you see.
ETA: I’d also like to know if you’d consider that last quote from you to be a personal insult to me. AFAIK, that’s not allowed in GD…
Indeed. As a foreigner in these parts, I have always found packaging of products interesting, especially ingredients, as they seem to use a common language just with a few changes here and there (I know you know this, I’m writing for everyone else here). They highlight the differences instead of having separate sections for each language.
Hell, I’ve learnt Swedish as a foreign language (as an adult) and now work for a Norwegian company where I can hold conversations with the Norwegians. I can read their newspapers. It is all very weird (for me as a foreigner).
Did you hear that in the restaurant?
Surprisingly, West Friesian can muster more native speakers than Icelandic, although the latter language is undoubtedly in a much more favorable situation for its continued use and survival.
According to this paragraph in Wikipedia, the degree of intelligibility is asymmetric and highly variable. FWIW the citation behind this comes from the Council of Nordic Ministers, which would appear to be a fairly middle-of-the-road body without any extreme agenda. At the same time I recognize that the attempts used to evaluate and quantify the degree of intelligibility might well have been rather subjective.
With regard to my earlier statement on mutual intelligibility I should have acknowledged that such intelligibility can be highly variable and subjective, making the categorization of languages and dialects ambiguous at times. Yorkshire English should be easy for me as a native speaker of a different dialect, but having used German for many years I find that language much easier to understand than Yorkshire English. I’d always thought of Scots English as just another dialect, but then when Apple launched Suri, the voice activated command feature, it was notoriously unable to understand Scots English.
Ah dang! I’m so transparent.
Maybe I misheard, perhaps it was the Frys Islands. 