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It’s also because Dutch is closer to English. Frisian is the closest language to Old English.

gerdesj 6y ago
Unfortunately modern English is rather different to Old English. I can read later Middle English (Chaucer to Shakespear) with some difficulty but Old English is very hard. The WP page on Frisian Languages has this to say early on: "However, modern English and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, nor are Frisian languages intelligible among themselves, due to independent linguistic innovations and foreign influences." To give you a tiny idea of what we are up against here consider the name of the town I live in: Yeovil. When I first came here I thought - French obvs! Yeo-ville ie the town on the river Yeo. Hmm how wrong can I get: actually it was called Gifle in the 500s or so, which means "bend in the river" in a Saxonish language long gone - that's your old Frisian/German/Dutch/Angle thing. Morph the G into a Y and the f into a v, throw in a vowel shift and squint a bit and there you go. There are over 60 spellings recorded for this little town, including Euwell, Evill, Ivel and Gevelle. The local rugby team is called the Ivel Barbarians. The river is actually named after the town, which is named for a feature in the river! In Germany there is a town called Wegburg (I had my ears operated on in the hospital there in the '70s) and in England there is a town called Weybury - that one is easy to work out. Now pull back and look at modern English, Dutch, the Frisian collection of languages, German etc ie all the languages that are collected together as "Germanic". They are all rather different these days. I can't even pronounce van Gogh properly despite having a Dutchman repeatedly telling me how (something like "fan hoch"). I can say Moenchengladbach well enough but lets face it the name is pretty obvious even if you ignore the umlaut and the ch sound at the end - both sounds don't exist in modern English. I failed German O level but on the bright side I also failed French too.
smcl 6y ago
I don't know how correct this is linguistically, but it rings true for me anecdotally. The company I work for is headquartered in Amsterdam and when I hear my Dutch colleagues talking to each other some snippets have an eerily English feel in terms of their rhythm, tone and sound[0]. The best way I can describe it is by reference to this image: https://twitter.com/melip0ne/status/1120503955526750208 https://twitter.com/melip0ne/status/1120503955526750208 - it's composed of familiar looking blobs, but after a few seconds you know you don't recognise it at all and your pattern-matching circuits are just being a bit over-eager. That's the feeling I often get when I hear Dutch. [0] - of course the "gh" sound is not present in English so when that pops up you are immediately jolted back to reality. It's not even like the Scots "ch", it's further down the throat.
- sumedh 6y ago
  Haha I can confirm this as well. Two Dutch colleagues talking to each other in Dutch, I thought they were talking in English but I could not understand it, my brain got confused but then realised its not English.

Unfortunately modern English is rather different to Old English. I can read later Middle English (Chaucer to Shakespear) with some difficulty but Old English is very hard. The WP page on Frisian Languages has this to say early on: "However, modern English and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, nor are Frisian languages intelligible among themselves, due to independent linguistic innovations and foreign influences." To give you a tiny idea of what we are up against here consider the name of the town I live in: Yeovil. When I first came here I thought - French obvs! Yeo-ville ie the town on the river Yeo. Hmm how wrong can I get: actually it was called Gifle in the 500s or so, which means "bend in the river" in a Saxonish language long gone - that's your old Frisian/German/Dutch/Angle thing. Morph the G into a Y and the f into a v, throw in a vowel shift and squint a bit and there you go. There are over 60 spellings recorded for this little town, including Euwell, Evill, Ivel and Gevelle. The local rugby team is called the Ivel Barbarians. The river is actually named after the town, which is named for a feature in the river! In Germany there is a town called Wegburg (I had my ears operated on in the hospital there in the '70s) and in England there is a town called Weybury - that one is easy to work out. Now pull back and look at modern English, Dutch, the Frisian collection of languages, German etc ie all the languages that are collected together as "Germanic". They are all rather different these days. I can't even pronounce van Gogh properly despite having a Dutchman repeatedly telling me how (something like "fan hoch"). I can say Moenchengladbach well enough but lets face it the name is pretty obvious even if you ignore the umlaut and the ch sound at the end - both sounds don't exist in modern English. I failed German O level but on the bright side I also failed French too.

smcl 6y ago

I don't know how correct this is linguistically, but it rings true for me anecdotally. The company I work for is headquartered in Amsterdam and when I hear my Dutch colleagues talking to each other some snippets have an eerily English feel in terms of their rhythm, tone and sound[0]. The best way I can describe it is by reference to this image: https://twitter.com/melip0ne/status/1120503955526750208 https://twitter.com/melip0ne/status/1120503955526750208 - it's composed of familiar looking blobs, but after a few seconds you know you don't recognise it at all and your pattern-matching circuits are just being a bit over-eager. That's the feeling I often get when I hear Dutch. [0] - of course the "gh" sound is not present in English so when that pops up you are immediately jolted back to reality. It's not even like the Scots "ch", it's further down the throat.

sumedh 6y ago
Haha I can confirm this as well. Two Dutch colleagues talking to each other in Dutch, I thought they were talking in English but I could not understand it, my brain got confused but then realised its not English.