[color=#000000:post_uid0]I'm sure Nits is going to keep reminding you after he receives that long, whiney email from me about tenses and word order. Being the [i:post_uid0]only[/i:post_uid0] native Croatian speaker on board, he would be in DEEP trouble if everybody took it into their heads to learn Croatian... :D :D :D

(And EDW: yep! "Gospodar Prstenova: Povratak Kralja"...)[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]So far 17 bugged me about it, Cat wanted to know how you say "cat" in Croatian, Nan wanted "donuts", NAH some mathematical terms, and Sa`ar wanted to know the password of his fake LJ, which is also in Croatian.

AAAAAAAAH! :D[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Mmmm.... doughnuts....[/color:post_uid0]



Edited By Nan on 1086676004

[color=#000000:post_uid0]And no-one ever asked me about Dutch words. Except Sa'ar, who just wanted to know what it sounds like. :eyeroll:[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Aren't there some similarities between Dutch and German? Cus I was watching showcase (it was one of its foriegn films,not one of its smutty tv shows) and I could make out a few words of Dutch...okay, so I only know about 200 words of German right now...but um, yah.[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Depends on what German dialect you're working with. Dutch is pretty close to so called "Platt", which is an older Northern German dialect. The similarities stem from the so-called Hanse, a pretty big trading company that dominated the Baltic seas for quite some time. On the other hand, modern German is essentially a streamlined Frankenstein of many different local dialects strung together into a halfway coherent monster. It is true that there are similarities, and if you happen to speak Platt, you can usually discern what somebody talking in Dutch is yapping about. On the other hand, most people don't speak Platt, so there.

People like Rudy Carrell or Linda De Mol, who are originally Dutch, have long been show icons here in Germany and been speaking German for decades, but you can still clearly hear their accent. I find it kinda cute, myself, but then, I'm one of those superior snotty central Germans who thinks that the Bavarians need to get a damn clue.

Ah, cultural diversity.

Gatac[/color:post_uid0]

[quote:post_uid0="Gatac"][color=#000000:post_uid0]Dutch is pretty close to so called "Platt", which is an older Northern German dialect.[/color:post_uid0][/quote:post_uid0]
[color=#000000:post_uid0]That's freaky. Our dialect word for dialect is plat. :D

Yeah, Germans from that region often call us, and I can just speak Dutch to them. :lol: (I refuse to speak German, unless strictly necessary.)
It's also a well-known fact that [i:post_uid0]our[/i:post_uid0] dialect sounds a lot like German, too.[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]I tell you, people, linguistics is like Six Degrees without Kevin Bacon.

Gatac[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Ah, you kooky Europeans with your kooky languages. Why can't you all learn something simple, like English for instance? :D[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Actually, I'm wondering about that too. But then again, most Dutch people do know English. It's the Germans and Italians that are the problem. :eyeroll:[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Oh, please. My grandmother knows English.

Talk to the pizza people. :)

Gatac[/color:post_uid0]

[quote:post_uid0="Gatac"][color=#000000:post_uid0]I tell you, people, linguistics is like Six Degrees without Kevin Bacon.

Gatac[/color:post_uid0][/quote:post_uid0]
[color=#000000:post_uid0]Oh, it's [i:post_uid0]way[/i:post_uid0] more fun than that. :p
[quote:post_uid0]The similarities stem from the so-called Hanse, a pretty big trading company that dominated the Baltic seas for quite some time. [/quote:post_uid0]More resembling a mediaeval guild than a discrete company -- also known as the Hanseatic League -- their control of the Baltic trade meant that, to a large extent, they controlled trade in all of northern Europe for most of the Middle Ages.

Plattdeutsch = Low(land) German, which is more closely related to Dutch and Frisian.

Hochdeutsch = High(land) German, which is that foreign language spoken by the Bavarians and especially the Austrians. ;)[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0][quote:post_uid0="mudshark"]Plattdeutsch = Low(land) German, which is more closely related to Dutch and Frisian.

Hochdeutsch = High(land) German, which is that foreign language spoken by the Bavarians and especially the Austrians. ;)[/quote:post_uid0]
So you don't consider Dutch a foreign language? :p

[quote:post_uid0]Oh, please. My grandmother knows English.[/quote:post_uid0]
I'm not even sure [i:post_uid0]my[/i:post_uid0] grandmother know English. She knows a few words German, though. Yeah, a few words, which she learned when talking to a guy called Christian, once a year. :eyeroll:
But hey, my grand[i:post_uid0]father[/i:post_uid0] even [i:post_uid0]speaks[/i:post_uid0] some German. How's that? :eyeroll:[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0][quote:post_uid0]But then again, most Dutch people do know English.[/quote:post_uid0]

Most Dutch people speak better English than the average North American, I've found.

[quote:post_uid0]I'm one of those superior snotty central Germans who thinks that the Bavarians need to get a damn clue.[/quote:post_uid0]

Bavarians are the Newfies of Germany, but without the fish.

[quote:post_uid0]Why can't you all learn something simple, like English for instance?[/quote:post_uid0]

Says the Scotsman.

[quote:post_uid0]On the other hand, modern German is essentially a streamlined Frankenstein of many different local dialects strung together into a halfway coherent monster.[/quote:post_uid0]

That's what you get for changing the dialect in every village. Go mass communications! *g*

Actually, I believe there's a continuum of Germanic dialects from the North Sea to the Polish border, which is why Cat can understand the Platt Germans (although not Dutch people from the North, which is baffling). Each dialect can more or less make out what its neighbours are saying, but the changes add up, so someone from Hamburg can't make sense of someone from Brandenburg unless they speak Frankenstein.

Same deal for the Romance languages. Supposedly there's a Portuguese-> Galicia -> Castilian -> Catalan -> French -> Provencal -> Italian continuum.

*pedant mode off*[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Hm, I think you're right. I have much more trouble with Berlin German than the German close to home... Although, as far as I know, it [i:post_uid0]is[/i:post_uid0] the same German.

On the note of dialects, I just found out that a word I've always used as "depart", isn't Dutch. I'm perplexed. From some words I can imagine it'd be dialect, but this one is just so.. Dutch! Well, apparently not. :eyeroll:[/color:post_uid0]

[quote:post_uid0="catalina_marina"][color=#000000:post_uid0]So you don't consider Dutch a foreign language? :p[/color:post_uid0][/quote:post_uid0]
[color=#000000:post_uid0]I suppose [i:post_uid0]I[/i:post_uid0] would, personally, but I was speaking from the North German perspective, there -- I've known for a long time that they consider the Bavarians difficult to understand and the Austrians pretty well incomprehensible (and then there are the Swiss! :eyeroll: :D )
[quote:post_uid0]Most Dutch people speak better English than the average North American, I've found.[/quote:post_uid0]Also write it better (true as well for most of the other non-English-speaking countries in Europe.) Some days, I get the impression most Americans and many Brits learned the language from MTV or some equally reputable source, and picked up such writing skills as they possess entirely by accident.

My youngest brother studied at the Conservatory of Music in Rotterdam for two years and had a bit of trouble at first trying to pick up Dutch -- all the locals insisted on practicing their English on him. Eventually, it settled out that he would speak Dutch to them, they'd answer him in English and business more or less got taken care of. :lol:

[b:post_uid0]cat:[/b:post_uid0] which word? Just curious.[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]Aanrijden.[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]It sure [i:post_uid0]looks[/i:post_uid0] like it ought to be Dutch. If not, what is it really?

Edit: BabelFish thinks it's Dutch, too; most of the pages on which the word appears have the .nl coding; one of them even shows you all the ways to conjugate it ... in Dutch.

But it's not. Weird.[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]And apparently the Dutch language has no word for "evil"!

Pretty ironic, considering my "Evil Dutch Woman" invention, :D[/color:post_uid0]

[color=#000000:post_uid0]There's no Dutch word for evil?!

That's not possible.

Oh, I got it: it's "Marijke".

:D[/color:post_uid0]