Germanic Languages Compared: Basic Verbs #germanic

I finally begin to understand the meaning of "bank teller"

Absolutely fascinating. I am a latin languages guy, I am a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I speak Spanish and I am learning French. English is the only germanic language I speak and seeing time and space variations across the family is so very interesting. I notice the same with my latin languages, they have some words that expanded their meaning and some others that shrank theirs. Its just fascinating, amazing video

In Dutch we have tellen (to count) and vertellen (to tell), luisteren (to listen) and horen (to hear) are also close to English and German. Spijs is an old Dutch word for meal and comes close to the Scandinavian verb for eating. Drekka for drinken (to drink) has a nasty tone in Dutch because drek means half liquid sewage or mud. Werken is the Dutch verb we use for working nowadays, arbeiden is also known, but is now out of use. We do still use the word arbeider for worker.

It’s a pity that low German isn’t included. Great video though!

In Danish we have both the word "tale" and the word "snakke". Tale is formal while snakke is informal.

In dialectal Swedish you can say "språkas" as well as "tala". "Mål" in Swedish is also used to explain different ways to speak, often dialects or dialect groups. You can still notice the difference between "lyssna" (active action, to listen) and "höra" (passive action, to hear). In many sentences "höra" also includes a subtile indication to also follow or obey instructions/command. Where as "lyssna" is the be attentive, but do not carry the same subtile indication to also obey. In several dialects in Sweden also use the word "spisa" and "god spis" means "have a good eating". Many Swedish dialects, especially in the north, use the word "fara" extensivly for travel or journey, not only long distances. Instead of "åka tåg" many would use "fara med tåg". However many use "åka" in present and "fara" in past or future tense. So "jag ska fara med tåg" and "jag åker tåg". Often the destination is put before the method of travel as well (but the timing can be placed either way); "jag far till stockholm med tåg i morgon" (I travel to Stockholm by train tomorrow). However "åka" is a passive action but "fara" is an active action. It is like the difference between being a passanger and a driver. You do not "åka" a horse, you can only ride it (which is an active action). However you can passivly "åka" a vagon or a boat; but you can also activly drive a vagon as well as sail or row a boat. You can "åka med" (go with/by) meaning either "tag along", or being a passenger, or means of transportation (in a passive way). So "åka" is always a passive action, while fara/ köra/ segla/ ro/ padla/ flyga/ cyckla/ gå etc etc is all active actions. You can in casual Swedish sa "slafa" where "slaf" is a more primitive form of bed, similar to a "slab" of wood. And in typical Swedish manner if you put a -a in the end of a subjective you can create a verb of it meaning to use the subjective; even if it will not be a "correct" Swedish word people will most of the time understand it. One example is "veda" (or ve'a) where "ved" means wood (or more spwcifically firewood) and "veda" means to collect, chop, split, stack and dry wood in order to prepare the firewood. The word "knyta", to make a knob, is made up of "knut" (knob) and -a (which turns the u to y). There is a myriad of these types of words, official as well as unofficial variants. "Läsa" in Swedish can be used in "Läsa av" meaning to look in order to gather information. You can "läsa av" (read of) gauges or other measuring devices in order to gather data that will provide you with information (perhaps after some processing). You can "läsa av" faces or the mood in a room (read the room) etc etc. You can never "läsa av" a book though. "Läsa av" is used when the data provided need a bit of analysis, a bit of processing, in order to get to what it means in a bigger picture. So it is used in a context of collecting raw data. In Swedish we never use "läsa" in collecting anything else then visual information. "Råda" in Swedish both means to consult or give advice but it is also an older word for "to rule". So the name "Harald Hárdráda" (or in modern Swedish Harald Hårdråde) for example means Harald the Hard/harsh Ruler, not the Hard/harsh advicer/consultant. Swedish still uses "råda" as "rule" or "deside" in sayings ("om jag fingo råda..."; if I got to deside/rule) and in the folkloric being "rådarna" ("the rulers"), often shorted to just "rå" (skogsrå, sjörå, rågång etc). Even if a bit archaic it is still fully understandable for most. Bo in Swedish means a dwelling or a nest as well. Boa is a unofficial/dilactal verb that means to prepare a home/ nest/ dwelling. It is often used in the sentence "Boa in sig" meaning to prepare the home / dwelling in order to move in or to make it cozier and more homely. Both a dog that prepare a dog bed with a blanket in order to lay down and a family of humans that just moved in or a couple are expecting a child who redecorate and prepare for that can be said to "boa in sig". In swedish you also have "verka" or "verk" whith the meaning of creating something. "Verkstad" (workshop) is a place (-stad) where you create something (verk). A "kraftverk" (a powerplant) is a place that makes (-verk) power (kraft). The title of "verkmästare" is a "master over what is created", aka some sort of boss, overseer or senior worker/craftman. "Laga" in Swedish means either to repair or mend. With the exception of food where "laga", which is in this case a shortening for "tillaga" or "till laga", means to prepair, to make, to cook the food. The Swedish "ta" is a shortening of the original word "taga" (which is still in use in formal written language). One interesting thing here is that the rune for "K" was used as a substitute for the sound of a hard "G" and this carried over into tge Latin spelling, makeing it hard to exactly when and where the shift from "taka"/"take" to "taga"/"tage" took place in the spoken language. "Ge" in Swedish is a shortening of "giva". First the kombination of "g+e" have made the "g" soft in most of Swedish (but not all). The "e" in this case is a transitioning in sound from i to e and the i-rune was used as a substitute of the e-sound (in some cases). The letter F in the end of word was not pronounced F but was prounced V. This originates from the F rune being used as a substitute of the V sound in this very case (U-rune was used in the begining of words). This is why modern language have changed the spelling (haf -> hafv -> hav = all pronounced hav). This makes gifa/gefa/giva/geva all pretty much the same word pronounced very similar. One thing that sets it a part from older language though is the soft "g" prnounced as "j" so we get gifa = giva = jiva, and gefa = geva = jeva -> ge = je. However in the word for gift, "gåva", we have a different vowel sound and thereby the "g" is hard. Nowadays people think that the older spelling also means that G should always be hard and F should alwas be F so people pronounce old-spelled words like "gifa" with hard g and f, similar to english gift, when is was at the time of writing instead pronounced as "jiva". The Swedish correspondent to Icelandic "Hugsa" is "håga" "Jag hågar besöka dig senare" (I will visit you later). Used in the 1800 and perhaps the very early 1900s but fell out of fashion. Today is is still used in old compound worss like "håglös", as in "having no håg", meaning loss of spirit or the will to do anything, depressed, lacking the will to live. In many Swedish dialects, especially the mid and northern parts, speaks similar to norwegian. So in the sentence about the bus so would one say: "Vi bestämde oss fö' å ta bussen hem fö' de' va' billigare". The ' sign is a substitute for a silent/dropped letter (frequence is highly individual and contextual and can vary even within the same sentence). So except slight "wandering" vowel sounds Norwegian and spoken dilectal Swedish can be extremly similar. In a more formal setting one could for sure use "beslutade" which is then closer to the danish prefered word. One could also use "då" instead of "eftersom" or "för det". The sentence then becomes: "Vi beslutade oss för att ta bussen hem då det var billigare". Very interesting video! Liked and shared 😊

We need more comparision videos this way, I'd love see more with other groups of words.

So many great and comprehensive comments here, that's amazing! ❤

Bo appears in "neighbour' (near liver/near farmer) in english. Went/Wend/Wander I think is one of the versions of walk/go in English, Go has a middle english word yede from OE gede as a past tense. Work we see "wrought" as the past tense. As in, wrought iron. Nimman in OE survives in Nimble. In ModE we have "I will it" meaning "I want it." Hugsa/Hug- appears in Hugin/Munin, thought and memory, Odin's ravens, as I recall.

It's not only tala in Swedish though, you can also use prata, snacka, or språka, i.e. similar to Dutch/Afrikaans, Norwegian and German, respectively (among others).

Very nice! 1'd like to comment on the Norwegian examples. To eat: spise and ete are both used. To speak: snakke and tale are both used. To listen: Lytte and høre are both used. To work: Arbeide and virke are both used. To live: Bo and leve are both used. To make: Lage (not lave which is Danish). Someone who makes is a 'maker' however.

Great synopsis

Echt gut. Und sehr akkurate Aussprache.

In Lithuanian, the verb "to read" (skaityti) also means "to count", although most often a slightly different variation (skaičiuoti) is used to mean just that. The noun "number" (skaičius) comes from the verb "to count" (skaičiuoti) which is actually a variation on the said verb "to read" (skaityti). The same semantic evolution can be seen in Latin where the verb "to read" (lego) also means "to gather", "to collect" which was probably the first meaning of the verb, with the secondary meaning of "reading" developing from the idea that you mentally put a letter to another letter, as if collecting them, to make words and sentences. I know this particular verb is not related to the Lithuanian verbs mentioned above, but the similar semantic development in the two languages probably demonstrates a common thought process in humans in general, thus the semantic convergence. The example of the verb "to speak" (tala, tell) which has the meaning of "to count" (telja, zählen) in some of the other languages shows a similar process in Germanic, except "counting" is equated to "speaking", not "reading". When I checked the possible meanings of "telja" in Icelandic, I noticed that the apart from the primary meaning "to count" it has the secondary meaning "to think", "to believe". Again, I see parallels with the Lithuanian "skaityti", which also has the additional meaning of "to believe", "to consider [something is true]", although this usage is usually frowned upon in Lithuanian, seen as a semantic borrowing from the Russian "считать" ("schitat'"). But where Russian got it from, is another interesting question. The literary Russian language borrowed heavily from the Byzantine tradition (which was in a lot of respects a continuation or reinterpretation of the Ancient Greek literary tradition) and the Ancient Greek language used the verb "λέγω" ("lego") to mean both "to say" and "to consider", "to believe [something is true]". Perhaps a lot of these similarities have come to us all the way from the Antiquity? P. S. Kindly correct me if I'm wrong on any facts, since I'm not a professional in any of these fields.

We have schnacken as a dialect word in Germany and we use Werk as a word for work or achievement, most commonly in word combinations like Kunstwerk or Handwerker. We also have werkeln which means to do handicraft.

Nice! And props for your pronounciation of Dutch. Quite good! I would love to see the proto germanic forms written out. I can see more clearly the family resemblance and its root. Would that be a good suggestion? And I am sure you know, but you have a colleague doing the same stuff more in depth on Youtube. Jackson Crawford is his channel. I think he would be open for a collab.

"Vi bestämde oss för att ta bussen hem för det var billigare" is how I would've written/said it. Thinking about it I don't use "eftersom" that often. For me the sentence: "Vi beslutade att ta bussen hem för det var billigare" would've been fine as well. "Vi beslutade att taga bussen hem ty det var billigare". ;)

I think it's also worth to add an interesting detal that word "läsa/læse" we're using to say "study" in Danmark and Sweden. We say "jeg læser på universitet" means actually "i'm studding on the university".. I'm not sure if it's used this way in other parts of scandinavia too. Werbs sw. göra and dk. lave it's much more complicated.In both languages we use "göra/laga" and "gøre/lave" the differences are we can make something where we do not have phisycal product at the end like cleaning and then we uses göra/gøre; and we do have a product as ex. lave kaffe - make caffe or laga mat - make food.

Laga as in make, prepare is conserved in Swedish only in Laga mat, cook/prepare food. The more common meaning of laga is repair, mend. (Reparera also means repair, but mostly of machinery, devices + things like reputation, relations)

"sprechen" is rather Northern German, in the South we say "reden", like in: Redst du deitsch? The Swiss say "schwätze": Schwätzesch du dütsch? The Southern form of "hören" is "horchen", like in: horch einmal! "Gehen" is actually the Southern German form and is therefor often replaced with "laufen" in more Northern German vernaculars.