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I just saw a video, about the man who laughs at virtually everything (except your national anthem; then he cries) -- apparently an unusual side effect following his hip surgery two years ago. He talked some, but his beleaguered wife did most of the talking, and the interviewer did some.
This was the first time I have heard an extended conversation in Dutch, and do you know, I did understand some of it? (A word or two here and there, somewhat by context, but.) And for the rest, my head was tilted in that "if I listen and concentrate really hard I can almost get this" position.
Reading Dutch doesn't do much for me, but I got the feeling that were I ever to visit your country it might not take me too long to understand what was being said around me. Oh--unless, of course, you-all have some "out-there" dialects like we do: there's a TV show featuring people in Louisiana, that has subtitles--a fact that tickles my hubby.
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 Your video-scene is a little vague, but the wife doing all the talking shows a pretty avarage Dutch marital picture. Ja... well, our languages share many completely similar words even in pronunciation. It's true that when you see some of these words they may not completely look the same, but phonetically they're often very close. I'm sure you would learn to understand the spoken language very fast. We do have dialects, but only Frisian up in the North would need subtitles in a video. Here a little easily drawn list of examples:
word-woord
book- boek ( equal phonetics)
finger -vinger
bed-bed
hand-hand
foot -voet
chin-kin
sock-sok
pain-pijn
sun-zon
sick-ziek
day-dag
find-vind
friend-vriend
bell-bel
ring-ring
door-deur
pot-pot
arm-arm
knee-knieand so on
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Ooh, thank you! That is so cool! dag is tag in German, n'est-ce pas?  Very close! I wouldn't get to 'day' from 'tag' but from dag it's easy. [HUG]
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I wouldn't get to 'day' from 'tag' but from dag it's easy.
I don't see why not. German t often corresponds to English d: e.g., Tier 'animal' and deer, tun 'to do, make' and do[/o], [i]Tochter 'daughter[/i] and daughter, etc.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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German t often corresponds to English d I didn't know that--thank you!
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old hand
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old hand
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... and German d often corresponds to English th - as in:
the - die
three - drei
thief - Dieb (pron. deef)
etc
Last edited by Rhubarb Commando; 04/08/12 03:56 PM.
I'm immortal until proven otherwise
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I'm sitting in the middle. English in my left ear and German in my right ear, which gave me always a rather clear insight in the three of us. ear-oor-Ohr ( but why those Germans insist on capitalizing all nouns is a mystery to me )
Last edited by BranShea; 04/09/12 10:54 AM. Reason: capital
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but why those Germans insist on capitalizing all nouns is a mystery to me
Just a convention. Why do we capitalize proper names and the first word in a sentence? There was a movement afoot in the 19th century in Germany to not capitalize nouns. I have a few linguistics books from then that do not and that looks funny! The English tended to capitalize many more of their nouns in the 18th century. Who knows? Maybe they were on to something that we've lost ...
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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True, I have an example right at my left hand in this book I'm reading:
"....an established Rule, which is receiv'd as such to this very day, that nothing is capable of being well set to Musick that is not Nonsense. This Maxim was no sooner receiv'd, but we immediately fell to translating the Italian operas; and as there was no great Danger of hurting the Sense of those extraordinary Pieces, our Authors would often make Words of their own, entirely foreign to the Meaning of the Passage that they pretended to translate."
_ ADDISON, IN THE SPECTATOR ( 1711)
They were on to something, logic maybe? As I see no reason why some nouns are and others are not capitalized.
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