Tuesday, May 14, 2024
The Dutch-English connection
I was a little surprised recently to learn that the widely-spoken European language most similar to English is Dutch. You may not have noticed this if you visited the Netherlands, as 90% of the people there speak English to some degree, and you may have not listened for it.
Many Dutch words are cognates with English, sharing the same Germanic roots. The biggest difference as that Dutch retains gendered words (like French and Spanish), but neither English or Dutch has a case system where words have lots of variations.
It's relatively easy for English speakers to learn Dutch, but not many do-- probably because of the limited number of people in the world who speak Dutch. But still... it is tempting!
