Can Germans Understand Dutch? | Easy German 428

Hey everyone! 😃Don't forget to check out the Dutch version of this video! Linus and Tim ask Dutch people in Nijmegen whether they can understand German 😊👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfsrAkn0bd8

Funny to watch as a Dutch person. I had German in high school for 5 years, but wouldn’t say I can actually speak it. Understanding the German in this video was no issue tho 😄 Time to refresh my German knowledge 🇩🇪

I am a native speaker of Spanish who learned German quite long ago. I have always been quite confident in understanding, let's say, 40% of Dutch vocabulary. But there was this time when I was riding my bike happily in Flanders when I saw a big BIG billboard that said "Huren?" along with a beautiful young lady. Apparently, "huren" means "to rent" in Dutch. Those who speak German will understand why I completely freaked out.

As a person that speaks Afrikaans I understood all the Dutch in this video 😂

As a Norwegian, the fact that I immediately understood what «Hoe gaat het met jou?» meant really blew me away! (I’ve been learning german for almost a year now)

I'm a native speaker of Spanish, and I'm also fluent in Italian, French and Portuguese. Until some years ago, both German and Dutch were completely "opaque" to me. When I started learning German, I noticed that at least I could get the main idea of a text in Dutch. For me, German opened the door to another language family.

As a native Dutch speaker I do think it's easier for the Dutch to understand German than it is for Germans to understand Dutch. It probably has a lot to do with pronunciation (Dutch is much harsher and guttural). I'll go check out the Easy Dutch video to see if I'm right or not😂

I learned German for university studies but when I was given an article in Dutch to read, I found that if I read it aloud, as if I were a drunk German, I could get the gist ;)

I'm German and I was once to an open day of a Dutch university in Enschede, listening to various presentations. And when German-natives were speaking Dutch I was amazed to understand around a third, enough to follow the presentation and understand what they were talking about even though it was my first time being in the Netherland and I had no meaningful exposure to Dutch before.

In high school our German teacher just arrived from Germany and didn't speak a word of Dutch. We had to learn him Dutch as he was teaching us German. This was extremely easy, as we had no trouble understanding him, and he was a quick learner and very intelligent and kind! He was the best German language instructor in our school. Our class scored almost a whole grade higher on average than the class of 'Herr Muris' (the dreaded angry old guy, who would flunk his entire class. He even gave people an impossible score of -14 on a scale of 1-10.). We actually started to love German (we had grown to detest it under Herr Muris). The first half hour of the class we had to do tasks, the last half we watched German movies without subtitles. The teacher was very well liked :)

I'm a 15 year old from Canada who speaks Dutch because of my family. I'm good friends with a kid from Germany and we often compare languages. It's interesting to see the similarities and hige differences between the two

I'm an English speaking American who can understand much German (I studied it for 3 years in High School as an elective language). When I lived in Amsterdam and attended Dutch language school (taught in English) we formed "study groups" and it was easier for me to sit in the German native speakers study group rather than the generic English speaking study group since I was translating Dutch into German in my mind rather than English. It helped with the genders and tenses. When our teaches saw my notes and what I was doing she was amazed ---

We were on holiday in Germany once and a couple of Germans heard us talking English and asked if we were Dutch. I didn’t know it was a thing that some people might even mix up English with Dutch.

I speak Afrikaans and I find it relatively easy to follow a conversation in Dutch. When it came to learning German it also helped me more than expected and sometimes I am pleasantly surprised when I find words that are similar across languages e.g. steen, stone and Stein are all so close.

Dutch and German languages were much closer in the past. There have been grammar and spelling reforms over the years. My grandmother (Dutch) would still write words like "Mensch", "Visch" (German : Mensch, Fisch) with the "sch" suffix that was later abandoned in modern Dutch spelling and became "Mens, Vis". Rule of thumb is : the "sch" is omitted, and a double S in German becomes the letter T in Dutch... Wasser, Schloss, Schmeissen, Fuss, will be "Water, Slot, Smijten, voet" There are more handy spelling rules like this.

Different subject but nearly every Dutch or German person I’ve ever met can speak English which amazes me. Of course I know the languages are related but it’s still very impressive how good there English is! I’m English of course 😂

It feels good to understand sentences like these now. I have only been learning for 3 months yet, but I love the language and would like to speak it a bit some day :)

I knew a German who said he usually understands enough to decipher the general meaning of what a Dutch person is saying if they speak slowly. Not all the time though.

I grew up close to the Dutch border. I sometimes watched Dutch TV which we could receive over the air. And still today, I can receive Dutch and Belgium FM radio stations. They play far better music so I listen to them a lot while driving. I can understand a lot if it's not spoken too fast. If it's written I can understand even more. Still, it's a different language so there are always things that are difficult to understand if you don't know a specific important word in a sentence or when sth. cannot be guessed from context. Overall, I'd say I understand 80% approximately. What's very embarrassing though: The Dutch for some reason always speak excellent German. So you don't really dare to bring up your humble knowledge of a few Dutch words given the opportunity 😊. Amazing people by the way. Can only say the very best. Very friendly and helpful. Never had a bad experience whenever I needed to travel there (e.g. airport, shopping etc.). Great to have them as our European neighbors. 👍

As a German, if you become acquainted with a few basic changes, like how the "g" is pronounced, or that the "f" becomes often a "p" for example, you will understand much more intuitively without having to look up a word. In many cases Dutch seems to be a very old and grammatically simplified version of German, at least for people from northern Germany, and yet there is much more to learn so that you can follow a conversation fluently.