German.Can you briefly understand Dutch and Afrikaan?Are there something similar between these 3 languages?

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cakes4africa

I am a South African living in North Germany where there is a dialect spoken called Plattdeutsch, which is a mixture of Dutch and German, and many of the words are exactly like Afrikaans. My husband is German and can understand Afrikaans, and spoken Dutch. He maintains he is also able to read Afrikaans, but then he lived in SA for a long time.

But, no, I do not think that the average German-on-the-street can read Afrikaans, say from a newspaper, perhaps Dutch. But of course, there are many similar words. It would be a real case of "talking with hands and feet."

Simon

as a german i can say you that iÂ´s not that hard to understand dutch but like mentioned in above there are some problems. I donÂ´t know about afrikaans but i heard itÂ´s like dutch

Kczweraczâ€”

Afrikaans is similar to Dutch and Dutch people understand South Africans the same as Americans understand Australians.

Between German and Dutch a lot of words are equal or similar. German â€” Dutch â€” English
Kultur - cultuur - culture
Angebot - aanbieding - offer
Sachen - zaken - things
Hund - hond - dog
gesucht - gezocht - searched
BÃ¼cher - boeken - books
Festtage - Feestdagen - holidays
weltweit - wereldwijd - worldwide
Niederlande - Nederlands - Netherlands
Deutsch - Duits - German
Gebrauch - gebruik - use
prefessionell - professioneel - professional
Leser - lezer - reader
Fragen - vragen - questions
berechnen - bereken - calculate
Versicherung - Verzekering - insurance
warm - warm - warm

Some words however have a completely different meaning although written in the same manner.
Nebel - mist - mist
Mist - mest - dung
schellen - bellen - to ring (the bell)
bellen - blaffen - to bark
Schuh - schoen - shoe
schoen - prettig - pretty
nuetzlich - nuttig - useful
nuttig - ??? - whorely
mieten - huren - to rent
Huren - hoeren - whores
hoeren - horen - to hear

rio-blanco

When I was thirteen we read a book in school that was partly written in Afrikaans. With a little help it was to understand. I am Hamburgian, we have 3 Dutch provinces ( these Dutch came about 1000 years ago) but they married only their companions and spoke their own dialect similiar to Hamburgian Plattdeutsch but it was more Dutch. Wenn I was young we spoke Plattdeutsch but when TV came these languages are dieing.

Alwin E

I am from south Germany, speak Hochdeutsch, and can understand SOME words of Dutch (because I was in the Netherlands quite often) and Afrikaans. The languages went apart centuries ago. To a foreign listener, (standard) German and Dutch may sound similar, but theiy are WORLDS apart. I maybe could follow the headline in a Dutch newspaper article, and understand what it's roughly about, but nothing more. Afrikaans and Dutch may be closer related, but their newspapers may be reporting about different topics and have developed their own jargon, so maybe it's not that easy to understand each other after all.

Zoe Dot

Yes, of course there are similarities. You could have figured this out by going to wikipedia.

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