Vhanja wrote:

Really? I never heard any German in her either.

I don't know if any of you have played the role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? It takes place in Skyrim, the home of the Nords. A people that is heavily influenced, in terms of landscape, culture and architecture, by Norse/Viking culture - yet a lot of the native Nords speak like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Haven't played the game but the accent thing sounds funny!

John's "therapist" has supposedly a German accent. Ariane sez so!
She does speak with a peculiar lilt but it's so soft I'd think she was Italian or something...

Like Nakahara said, Czech and Slovak are very similar and other Slavic languages are easier to learn/understand as well for Czech speakers, especially Polish: we had a Polish guide in Auschwitz - we didn't understand all but we understood the important things. And learning Russian was so much fun - when we didn't know the word, we just tried to say the Czech word with Russian accent and sometimes it worked.

I can understand Dutch quite well but I am not sure that goes for all Germans. My dialect is related to Dutch which makes understanding much easier. 

Indeed and accent wise, we from the North of England are supposed to be some of the best German speakers!

Yeah, both English, German and Scandinavian have Germanic roots, so several words are similar. 

I can't remember the name of the place, but there is a place in England that has a dialect heavily influenced by Norwegian. It's quite fascinating. 

Also, isn't it the Scots who use the word "baern" for children? That's similar to the Norwegian "barn", which means the same.

Icelandic is as close to Old Norse as we get. I am unable to understand spoken Icelandic due to the way the pronounce the words, but if I read an Icelandic text, I can perhaps understand the gist of it with some effort.

Last edited by Vhanja (February 7, 2017 11:39 am)

Haha, yes, I think it would be the same for me if I were to learn Slavic languages - I have no frame of reference, no words I can recognize. Languages like English, German or Latin-based are much easier because I can recognize a lot of the words.

Vhanja wrote:

Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive etc. German has eight, doesn't it?

No, German has only these four. ;)
Latin has got five.
EIght would be too crazy, but I think Finnish has a lot of cases. Eight or nine...

Interesting topic. Understanding other languages has not so much to do with the direct neighbours most of the time. Most important is, that it is the same or related language family, I think.

I am German and German is my only mother tongue. I learned English AND Latin from quite an early young age on (~10 years old). Later, I also had some French in school and a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of Spanish. I'm in my mid-twenties now, the only other language I use regulary now, is English. (Apart from German of course)

As a German, I am totally lost when it comes to understanding slavic languages.
Really.
I, and I bet 99% of all Germans, don't understand or could identify a word. I really wonder why. Although Poland and Czech Republic are direct neighbours. And it doesn't matter if spoken or written. I could as well try to listen to Chinese or Russian and understand just as much. Which would be nothing! ;) (Although from what I know, many pupils in the old GDR, when Germany was divided, had to learn Russian and Germans who grew up in the GDR might understand and speak some Russian. ;))
I noticed a tiny difference with Croatian, though. I think Croatian can be classified as a slavic language. I was there on holidays once, and there were a least some phrases that sounded a little bit familiar or in general, easier to understand. For instance I remember "Dobre dan" or something like that, which meant "good day" or "guten Tag". So "dan=Tag". yeahhh. I think Croatian is a bit influenced by the neighboured Italian (=the roman language group), as well as maybe some of its neighbours like Slovenia or Serbia.
Still, I am almost as lost as with the slavic languages.

I am more or less fluent in English, obviously. Not a surprise, as I had it for years in school and as it is a Germanic language and heavily influenced by Latin. Much more than German was influenced by Latin. I guess English is not that difficult to learn for Germans.

Now, what about the other Germanic languages?

Dutch obviously is similar to German, nontheless, it still isn't that easy to understand as you might think it is. So I would say if you read or listen to Dutch, you would definitely know what they are talking about, while being far from understanding all of it and VERY far from speaking a word of Dutch. What I experienced is, that Dutch people are FAR more capable of understanding and speaking German. (They are even better in English, but hey, Dutch is really not that far from English. )

The Scandinavian languages... Not easy to understand for Germans as well.  Those languages are not thaught in school. Although I can imagine that in the far north of Germany in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, you can also learn Danish in school, for example. But it is not common. While reading and listening to the Scandinavian languages, you will find some familiar words. But listening to a conversation, I am NOT sure, I would know what they are talking about in general... Dutch would be easier for sure. As I don't have much experience with Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, I can't tell which language would be the easiest to understand.

Now to the Roman language group... As I wrote above, I had Latin for some years, and later French. I can't tell if it mostly because of Latin, but although I never learned Italian, Portugese or Spanish (only had a handful of hours in Spanish), I understand these languages surprisingly good!!! Especially if it's written. I think in the end, it all helps: Latin, some years of French in school and English. French is obvious, because these roman languages are quite similar, French will help understanding the others. And yes, English as well! that's what I think: Enlish has so many Latin based words in it, that it will help you understand the other romanic languages. Speakers of Italian, Spanish and Portugese tend to speak super fast and often times I really don't understand much. That's why I would prefer written. If they speak very slow and clear and use "easy" words, I am sure I understand what the are talking about. And for sure better than the Scandinavian ones, even when spoken fast, although family wise, the Scandinavian ones should be closer to German.
But I think in the end, this effect comes from the languages I was thought. the focus clearly is on English, Spanish and French here in German schools. I had enough French to understand at least what a conversation would be about, or whats written in the newspaper and speak some very simple lines (enough to go on holidy there. ;)). With the others, especially Italian and Spanish, whether spoken or written, I would at least better understand what it is about, than when it comes to Scandinavian languages.

What would be interesting to know is, which language a person would understand best, if they never lerned any other language at school. So that the basis would only be their mother tongue. Maybe I would then understand Danish better than French for example.


A good and easy way to test your language skills, I think, is to read a little instruction manual for some device. You can very easy compare the same content.
What is more: If I read the same thing in German and KNOW what the text is about, I suddenly begin to understand more from the other languages, I can identify more words and their meaning for example. And this works interestingly with both: The Roman AND the Scandinavian languages.

Last edited by Rache (December 17, 2017 11:20 pm)

Quite interesting conversation here!
I' m  native Russian speaker, but I speak also fluently German, a bit Italian, and learned English by myself. For me it's much easier to understand speaking English (as well as to read and write) than to speak. I' m totally embarrassed  to make a mistake, so the best way for me to speak free is to do it being  not fully sober.
Also, I like to "decipher" new  words I got to read or to hear.  Here a very nice one , for  example, as I was reading my favourite English poet from XVII century - " asunder".  I just loved it. Sounds quite like the German " auseinander". (And it's correct.)
Really enjoyable game , but I love languages in general. So I try to keep my Russian (writing at least) alive while speaking mainly German, Italian just for fun and improving my English as well.

Last edited by DramaQueen (December 18, 2017 10:22 pm)

You know how notoriously lazy we Brits are, so lazy I can't even bothered to see what I've already said on this subject!
But to re-cap: learned French and German in school...long regretted not also doing Latin, still want to learn it.
Learned Welsh when I lived in Wales, did a year of Scots Gaelic and since a semester of Polish.
Out of interest: our primary school kids are taught French and Mandarin.