Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Hier ist mein Haus." sounds a lot like "Here is my house."
No, in terms of sound, German does not sound like English. For that matter English from a few centuries ago doesn't sound like English. Hell, English from Louisiana doesn't sound like English!
It's notable that most of the germanic languages are much more divergent amongst themselves than romance languages, except the nordic languages. English and German are completely different to each other, almost in the same level of distance between French and Romanian. It's also difficult to recognise Frisian as the closest language of English. The distance of both seems to be larger than the distance between Portuguese and Catalan.
[SIZE=4]Frederich Engels in a letter to Karl Marx - One only needs to travel across the country to be convinced that the main stock of the English comes from Schleswig. You know the Dutch Frisians, in particular those colossal Frisian women with their delicate white and fresh red complexions (which also predominate in Schleswig). They are the ancestral types of the northern English, and in particular those colossal women, who are also found here in England, all are of decidedly Frisian type.[/SIZE]
Frisian is the closest I've heard. The first time I met Frisian speakers I thought they were speaking a different variety of English that I simply couldn't understand because of the accent.
To a non speaker, English sound like gibberish or baby talk. East Asian languages do sound like yelling, as if they are upset at each other. German, Polish and Russian sound very polite and tender. Portuguese and Italian like Spanish mutations. And French very romantic.
Actually, the more German I pick up, the more I realize it sounds like a funny-sounding version of English. Many of the words share a similar (albeit on a very basic level) root sound to English words. It may not be obvious right away, but I notice it more and more.
A Germanic language that varies depending on who's speaking it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
