Reply to: A message for Dutch speakers

[ThomasSoerensen]

Thanks to the citizenship requirements the congregation can rest easy and be glad to know a foreigner living in Denmark generally knows more about Denmark and Danish culture than even a well educated Dane.

You were not talking about Amager?

[Board Game Geek]

Threaded wrote : when King Christian II brought 45 farming families up from Holland to provide food to the court.

Threaded's ancestors

their football-field sized dining table

[darmstadt]

Wilhelmus van Nassouwe
Ben ick van Duytschen bloet

although I quite like these lines:

Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue,
Deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang

[threaded]

not anymore.

I know a few who have moved to Amager.

Thanks to the citizenship requirements the congregation can rest easy and be glad to know a foreigner living in Denmark generally knows more about Denmark and Danish culture than even a well educated Dane.

[ThomasSoerensen]

Rather interestingly in the 'official' Danish history the first example of an integration problem was in 1735 when a Danish speaking priest was appointed to a Church on an island that is now part of Copenhagen where all the locals spoke Sallands (and little or no Danish). Lots of people in the area still have Dutch names and the accent is recognisably Dutch, well to my ears. They're all the descendants of an experiment in 1521 when King Christian II brought 45 farming families up from Holland to provide food to the court.

not anymore.

I know a few who have moved to Amager.

[JamieMoles]

That said the pronunciation of the langauges is very differnt - for example in WW2 Allied soldiers folllwing the route of the Nazis from The Nehtherlands - would test if a suspected German soldier was in fact pretending to be Dutch by asking him to pronounce the name of the Dutch resort Schevinigen.

I heard the Germans did the same with suspected allies using the town of Oegstgeest - at least that's what I was told when I lived in Leiden.

[Jubber]

They're all the descendants of an experiment in 1521 when King Christian II brought 45 farming families up from Holland to provide food to the court.

...

[threaded]

I say Dutch is a language because I want to avoid being killed by Dutch people. Sallands, which I also speak, is a dialect of Dutch, but is very similar to the Low Saxon dialects of north west Germany and is considered by some to be a German dialect. Sallands is particularly useful for annoying people in Amsterdam.

Rather interestingly in the 'official' Danish history the first example of an integration problem was in 1735 when a Danish speaking priest was appointed to a Church on an island that is now part of Copenhagen where all the locals spoke Sallands (and little or no Danish). Lots of people in the area still have Dutch names and the accent is recognisably Dutch, well to my ears. They're all the descendants of an experiment in 1521 when King Christian II brought 45 farming families up from Holland to provide food to the court.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Modern German is the child of the Dutch language - HochDeutsch evovled in the late 17th century from PlatDeutsch - which is the Dutch language.

If you visit Koln you can still hear much PlatDeutsch being spoken - which resembles modern Dutch.

That said the pronunciation of the langauges is very differnt - for example in WW2 Allied soldiers folllwing the route of the Nazis from The Nehtherlands - would test if a suspected German soldier was in fact pretending to be Dutch by asking him to pronounce the name of the Dutch resort Schevinigen.

Germans have a real problem trying to say that word - not for me as Ive lived in Holland on and off for three years - that said I could speak German before I arrived so Dutch people tend to think I'm German as I tend to use the German grammatical structure eg verbs at the end of the sentence.

Which is a tad annoying.

But as they say in Holland - You Aint Much - If you Aint Dutch

[Durbs]

I got sent on a 2 week intensive Dutch course run by nuns in in Vught where all we were allowed to speak during the day was Dutch. It was an experience.

[expat]

Is Dutch really a language? Or just a german dialect... ?

Discuss (in your preferred language but not dutch)

It is no more a dialect of German than English is.

Whether two languages are distinct or are versions of the "same" language is to an extent a matter of classification rather than hard and fast rules, but sometimes it is clear that it would be bizarre to treat a given two languages as one. Mutual intelligibility in everyday speech is not the only criterion, or else one might ask whether Italian and Spanish are dialects of the same language. In a sense they are (they are both dialects of Latin) but it is not really useful to say that; much more useful to say that they are closely related languages.

Origin matters for some purposes: if two languages developed from a common ancestor then you are likely to say that they are indeed two languages, closely related; but if one of them developed first and then the second developed from the first, you are much more likely to say that the second is a dialect of the first. Even then, other factors make the decision, for example if every native speaker of the second language could be expected to have a command of the first, then in practice the second might be said to be a dialect of the first; but if many native speakers of the second language could not pass as educated speakers of the first, then they are distinct. Example: Afrikaans.

To a large extent the classification of languages as distinct or not really does depend on the purpose of the classification, and languages may be distinct for one purpose but not for others. In many cases the purpose is hidden, for example political rather than linguistic. Example: Scots. If your purpose is to puff up a distinct Scottish culture, you will call it a language; if your purpose is to deny it, you will call it a dialect of English. Historically it is a distinct language from English because it developed at the same time from the same and different roots; but practically today, every educated Scots speaker is an educated English speaker, so it can be seen in practice as a dialect. Take your pick, according to what you want to do with it.

[Mich the Tester]

Mich is Sallands like Friesland or something?

No, it's a bit like Germanish-Dutchish if you see what I mean. It's farmer's Dutch, but easily understood over the border in Germany by people from Lower Saxony.

[chris79]

Mich is Sallands like Friesland or something?

[chris79]

I saw a role wanting someone who could speak English, Dutch and French.. I guess they should probably go advertise in Belgium.. is there a skills shortage there for project work?

[OwlHoot]

I had an email this morning about a PHP role in Munich, and as it was all in German I wondered whether to bother running it through an online translator and reply.

Not sure if it indicates they're looking for a German speaker, or whether it was just an oversight.

The rate was probably pretty rubbish, but needs must when the Devil drives, and anyway a low Euro rate might soon amount to a respectable Sterling rate (unless Eastern European countries default on their loans, and the EU goes down in flames ... )