Can German & Dutch Speakers Understand Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)?
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2023
- Can German and Dutch speakers understand Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)? In this episode we showcase some of the similarities and test the degree of mutual intelligibility between them. Instead of a list of words and sentences, Corinna (Plautdietsch speaker) will read some short sentences to see how well Remco (Dutch speaker) and Matthias (German speaker) can understand the language.
Please follow and contact us on Instagram if you have any suggestions or if you speak a language that has not been featured before and would like to participate in a future video: / bahadoralast
Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) is a Low Prussian dialect of East Low German which has been influenced by Dutch. It developed in the Vistula delta area of Royal Prussia. The Mennonites took the Plautdietsch language with themselves as they moved to the southwest of the Russian Empire in late 1700s, and eventually brought it to North America in the 1800s.
Today, Plautdietsch, with two major dialects, is spoken across Canada, with significant communities residing in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as well as the United States, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Belize, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
The first Mennonites who arrived in Canada initially settled in Southern Ontario while Canada was still a British colony. Today, the Mennonite population is Canada is around 200,000, but many do not speak Plautdietsch.
A brief history about the Mennonites:
The Mennonites, along with the Amish, are a religious-cultural group which formed during the Protestant Reformation in Central Europe. Dating their separate Christian identity to the Anabaptist movement of the early 16th-century Reformation. Mennonite differ from other Christian denominations in that baptism is a choice made by mature voluntary believers, and not by infants. Menno Simons, originally a Roman Catholic priest, left his position with the Catholic church and became the leader of the Anabaptists in the area, and the people in this community became known as Mennists (later Mennonites). The persecution of the community led to them scattering throughout Europe and North America. 
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"mien Voda sien Groutvoda" sounds exactly like in Low German
Wow I am a Mexican Mennonite whose first language is Low German and I never expected to see it make an appearance on your channel! Great to see some representation! Corinna did a great job with the pronunciation :)
Corinna here. 😊 Dankscheen! I'm not great at speaking it (yet, at least) but I tried my best.
With a dutch name😊
Would have been great if the german native speaker would have been able to speak plattdeutsch. From my point of view, he struggled more because he wasn't from the northern parts of Germany
100%.
Same for the Dutch speaker. A plat/lower Saxon speaker would've been better.
You should have asked a Flemish person too. The part, "Ekj sen", for example, where the Dutch person had trouble with, a Flemish person would have recognized it instantly.
Flemish and Nederlands (Dutch) are already recognized as dialects of the same language by linguists.
@@deadman746the Flemish are more used to hearing different dialects/accents. The Dutch get easily confused whenever things sound slightly different from what they're used to.
@@frankpierco8826 especially the Dutch from Utrecht and west of there. Dutch people from the north and east are often used to other varieties and languages, like Frisian, Low Saxon, Limburgish. They might fare a bit better as well.
Kloef derop
@@frankpierco8826 Bullshit. It's mainly young 'professionals' living in Amsterdam and the surrounding area that are just profoundly stupid and ignorant. 95% of regular Dutch people can easily understand someone from Groningen, Limburg, Texel, or Zeeland. Or Antwerp or Hasselt for that matter. And another thing: the linguistic difference between someone from Brabant and someone from Groningen is a lot bigger than between the Brabander and someone from Antwerp. Dutch is a very rich language with a huge variety of dialects, ranging from Groningen to West Flanders, and from Limburg to Suriname.
I am a native Dutch speaker and familiar with German and a little Frisian, for me most of it was easy to follow and the rest I could make up out of the context. The written language was easier to understand than the spoken version of the sentence.
as a Dutch from the province of North Holland its harder to understand when i hear it , but written its pretty easy to understand
Yrs, reading it is easy to understand. I am Dutch and live in Amsterdam
Knowing a bit of Frisian definitely helps
Probably because she speaks with a heavy Anglophone accent.
If you had a time machine to go back and listen to someone in the old country 100 years ago, you'd probably understand better.
The "weird" thing is that many of her g's seem to be silent...
Bahador, thanks so much for the opportunity. I had a lot of fun! I also want to thank Corinna for letting me experience a language I knew very little about and Matthias for being my tag team partner :). These videos are amazing and I hope your channel can bring everyone a little closer together, despite our differences.
My pleasure! Thanks a lot for being a part of it!
Thank you for being part of this! It was really fun!
As someone from northern Germany (low german area) this was too easy to understand. :)
As a Swiss German speaker I am amazed how easily I can understand her. 'sommer vogel' is also a butterfly in some Swiss dialects,and the 'mym vattr sine grossvattr' ( my father's grandfather ) construct is also often used.
The spelling is very distracting, we tend use other letters to transcribe similar sounding words, even though Swiss German is not a written language.
Yeah our Plautdietsch spelling is a mess. 😅😂 When you know how the language sounds it becomes more intuitive, but it's still a challenge for me sometimes since some people use some different spellings than what I used here.
Yiddish too, zumer-feygl, understood it right away. @@runningaroundaimlessly432
Sommerfugl is butterfly in Norwegian 🙂
I'm from Nordfjord in Western Norway, and in my dialect we will for instance say "min sin kopp" for "my cup".
Mennonites can understand Belgien, Dutch and German newspapers and hear most of them in spoken form - but the other way around is not possible
-cause low German is the root!
People in the Netherlands aged 45 or older all speak or understand German. I am 55 and we always watched German TV.
I speak Dutch Gronings, which is a Dutch dialect closely related to German and East friesian. So I understood most of it
me too
Gronings isn't a Dutch dialect. It's an low saxon dialect with frisian substrate and Dutch influence
Same, I could understand it better expecting it being similar to gronings than expecting it to be similar to dutch.
Same… I speak East Frisian Low German, and I could understand all of it but except we use spazeeren like Hochdeutsch spazieren.
As a Mennonite, I understood everything. My ancestors come from Holland/Belgium and spoke a Flemish dialect. The Mennonites fled from the Netherlands, Belgium and northern Germany (Friesland) because of persecution to Danzig, Marienwerder, Elbing (then West Prussia, now Poland) and later emigrated to southern Russia (now Ukraine) at the invitation of the Russian Tsarina Katarina 2. The Flemish dialect probably mixed with the Frisian and German dialects and this is how Plautsdeutsch emerged. Many Mennonites from Russia have emigrated to the USA, Canada, Mexico and Paraguay, some have come back to Germany in the 90 years and a small number still live in Russia.
I came across French Flames on RUclips and many sentences were 1:1 with Plautdeusch.
It would now be interesting for me to know which region in Holland/Belgium my ancestors come from.
Yep. That's the story of my family too. The great-grandfather I mentioned in the video was born in Molotchna. I'm not sure exactly where in Germany or the Netherlands my ancestors came from, though, but according to 23&me, my highest matches are in North Holland, South Holland, and Friesland, but interestingly the Berlin area is also listed, and Matthias mentioned that his hometown is close to Berlin and his dialect was somewhat similar, so maybe that dialect also influenced our language.
There are Mennonites in Belize, Central America, too. I looked this up because I'm from here & I'm learning German. I wanted to find out if there are similarities & if it is possible to communicate.
I am a 62 year old german but have been living in new zealand for 30 years. I am from kleve in germany which is right next to the dutch border. I can understand most dutch and also the dialect the old people used to speak is very close to this. Reading was very easy and i understood most of it.
Thank you again Bahador for letting me be part of a video! It was really fun to do this with Remco and Matthias and see what they could understand, and really nice to share a little bit of my heritage. And hopefully the nerves at the beginning don't show. 😅😂
Also, my pronunciation may be a bit off, but I tried to pronounce everything as close to how I grew up hearing it. I think it went well.
Thank you so much for being a part of this Corinna, and for taking the time to give us a glimpse of your culture, language, and history! It was very interesting and educational! Thank you 😊
I had a lot of fun and enjoyed learning something new. Thanks for showing us the language. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your speech with us. Interestingly the g sound in Old English started to become a ye sound and by Middle English had dropped off, and as you also say, BUT NOT ALWAYS. I'm learning Greek at my orthodox church here in NZ and my φιλόλογος / philólogos - Greek master there at our little school therein told me that there are always exceptions to the rules in Greek. I think this goes with any tongue. 💙
Same… I speak East Frisian Low German… and how we speak it here in Illinois is often an even older pronunciation, and I could understand all of it… but except we use spazeeren like Hochdeutsch spazieren. Our pronunciation is different, but in many ways very similar. We say Bottervögel instead of Sommavoagel. We say “ik bün”… but sometimes people will say “ik sün’”
I'm a Finn, those sentences were surprisingly understandable with my rudimentary Swedish and very rudimentary Dutch.
Hei, terveisiä Kanadasta! Corinna ( Low German puhuja videossa) tässä. 😊
I speak Dutch, English and some German. I found it quite easy to understand. It really sounded like a language right in between Dutch and German. It did help a lot when you see it all written out though.
Thats pretty much what it is. The difference between low german (aka low saxon) and high german is that low german lacks the high german consonant shift.
Dutch (aka low franconian) similarly lacks this high german consonant shift.
There is both upper franconian and upper saxon as dialects of high german. So you can see how close this is all connected.
Yes, easy to understand except for a few words "Mejal" e.g. "Mejal" perhaps comes from the German word "Mädel".
@@nomaam9077 True, Dutch meisje is also derived from maagd/virgin. But we lost the d/t sound and replaced the ending with our patented diminutive -je which we can plonk on anything that's small or cute.
But that doesn't leave much to recognise ;)
@@nomaam9077 Actually, Remco and I both looked it up after we recorded this, and it seems like it comes from Old Prussian.
Reading it is much easier than listening.
I speak plautdietsch fluently. I did not teach it to my children, I regret it.
This was awesome, I didn’t realize these languages were so similar.
Aha, I think I recognize you. Goondach! (I'm Corinna, the one in the video.) My dad has shown me a couple of your videos. 😊
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 Goondach. oh my! What a small world. Hello Corinna. ❤️
@@dietschegroosmame3596 It really is a small world! ❤
I got way too invested when she said Sommavoagel in Mennonite Low German. I was screaming butterfly to the screen. 😂
She’s right. In Danish (and also in my Norwegian) butterfly is sommerfugl, and it literally means summer bird.
The Scandinavian languages were heavily influenced by Low German through the Hanseatic trade during the Middle Ages. I think butterfly is something similar in Yiddish as well.
Haha. 😂 Yeah I knew that word was different from both German and Dutch but I wanted to throw in a bit of a challenge for them and see if they could figure it out. 😅
That could be. I haven't looked into the etymology of the word but it would explain it. I think it's the same or similar in Frisian as well.
I also remember another one of Bahador's videos where it was Frisian and Norwegian, and when I saw that word for butterfly I was like "Hey I know that one, we say it like that too!!"
In some Yiddish, yes. There are many regional words for butterfly in Yiddish.
I am a native Plautdietsch speaker, and I have never heard that word before. We call butterflys "Flottasch".
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 Simmerfûgel has as its more or less standard MODERN meaning in West Lauwers Frisian a bird of a species which breeds in the area the word is used (for), but has gone completely to other places (usually closer to the equator) for the winter, without any tough remainers facing the winter at home or other birds breeding closer to the pole replacing the breeders. Dutch "zomervogel" has the same meaning, if that Dutch guy had been a birder with some experience with Afrikaans he would have guessed that was the meaning.
The Frisian meaning "butterfly" can be found a three part dictionary from 1911, or in expressions or in literary art, but it is not the first word a modern Frisian (W.L) would use for the critter the anglophone would call a "butterfly" that would be "flinter".
Seeing it written it was pretty easy, but just hearing it required some mental gymnastic indeed (I speak Swedish, Dutch, German and English).
Oh, and I should also add one small detail: I said that my great-grandfather was born in Russia because the colony where he was born/ my family emigrated from was still part of the Russian Empire at the time, but now it is in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine.
Hallo aus Düsseldorf, ich fand es sehr einfach, ich spreche Deutsch, niederländisch und englisch und lebe dicht an den Niederlanden.
I'm from Germany and I speak literally the same dialect as her and it is really interesting to see that all over the world are people living with the same dialect 😃
I'm very curious where the roots from this dialect are 🤔
I believe our particular language originated when my ancestors were in Prussia.
I'm really curious what the specific differences are between how we speak and the dialect / language in Germany.
I speak this plautdietsch as well. It is not only connected with the mennonites, but entire communities in Russia speak this dialect.
@@mansgottado I wouldn't be surprised if there is still a connection though. I should've mentioned in the video that my family and ancestors are referred to specifically as Russian Mennonites because we settled in Zaporizhia for a while.
I am Frisian-Dutch (raised bilingual) living in the south part of the Frisian Provence where many people also speak Stellingwerfs witch in turn is part of the Sallands dialect or Nedersaksisch. I also speak German and some Norwegian. Had no trouble at all understanding what was said but for me it was also helpful to see it written out ( I don't know if the participants could see that). Most helpful in understanding for me were the Nedersaksisch, Frisian and German (in that order). Great video 😁👍
I'm a Norwegian who knows German, and also have messed around with Dutch to a certain degree. Apart from the word 'Mejal', the rest of the sentences were somewhat easy to grasp. Plautdietsch feels like a nice mix of Dutch, German and Norwegian, IMHO.
Thank you all for this interesting video!
Mejal - mejsje in Dutch.
@@Svemicke
It's supposedly from Old Prussian, a non-Germanic language.
Mejal = Mädel in German
absolutely fascinating. I am from Northern Germany and I know some Danish, a very little bit of Dutch and of course Plattdütsch, our version of Low German. I did understand much more than I expected. Thanks a lot!
I'm really curious how your Low German sounds compared to ours. They have the same name but I'm sure they sound a bit different since we haven't been in that area for centuries.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432I dare to correct you. They aren't called the same. The general term for both is Plattdeutsch, which means low German. But there are many varieties of low German. There is for example the Hamburger Platt or Minster Platt. The language, Corina spoke, is Plautdietsch, and one, the commentator mentioned is Platdütsch. They are similar but deferent enough so that for me, as a person, who grew up in a Plautdietsch-speeking family, the Plattdütsch is sometimes quite difficult to understand.
@@alexanderklassen5207 I am Corinna. 😅 But I understand your point, and you're probably correct. Our language is also close to eastern dialects in the Netherlands, according to my Dutch friend, and several comments here.
Also, I see the last name in your tag; it's very tempting to start the Mennonite game.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 😅 oh, wow, I didn't suppose, it could be you. Thank you for having shared a bit of your heritage and for bringing our language into a video of such a format. I've seen many videos like that, but never have I seen Plautdietsch in such a video. It was interesting. Yes madam, you did the right assumptions, seeing my name. I'm a "Klusse". But my heritage and origin is a bit deferent than yours. I was born in Russia and am living in Germany now. Therefore it was fun to see, how good a german understands Plautdietsch. Since I'm living in Germany, I know from experience, that some Germans, especially which coming from the North of Germany, understand a bit of Plautdiersch. Some better then the others. They, who come from the south mostly do not understand anything.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 I'll give it a try. Your sentences in Holsteinian Low German/Low Saxon/Platdütsk 😊:
Ny/Nich veele kinners könt nu dütsk snakken.
Kyk mål! Doar is eyn botterlikker.
Ik wil dy besoyken un med dy ween. Hest du tyd vundåg?
Sey is eyn smuk mäken.
Ik bün vun Kanada, as ouk myne öllern un groutöllern. Man myn våder syn groutvåder ( = ellervåder) weyr in rusland boren.
[pronounce "y" like "ea" in speak; "å" like "oo" in moose; "sk" like "sh" in shine; "ee" not as in English, it's more similar like in the German word See]
I'm curious about your thoughts. :)
Our ancestors came up to Canada from Pennsylvania soon after the American Revolution, accepting Britain's offer of a plot of land in Southern Ontario, making us United Empire Loyalists, though we were of Pennsylvania Mennonite stock.
I understand that our name (Ostrosser), came from Low German. An in-law who studied German linguistics saw the words "ost" and "rosser" in our name, and suggested that it could be "Eastern horseman"; others have suggested a contraction of "Oberstrosser". Needless to say, even my grandfather had lost any Pennsylvania Deutsch he may have known as a child.
Thank you for your interesting content.
That last name sounds to me like an Amish one. Amish are different from us and speak a different language but we do have similar origins.
Bahador, this was fun. The written i understood immediatly. I'm German, speak English ,Nederlands, French, some Italian ,some Afrikaans, little Spanish and i understand several Plattdeutsch dialects, Austrian and Schweizerdeutsch. So, this was easy for me. Please more of this content. You never stop learning!!!
We couldn't seen any sentences to read, didn't know the content. So I guess it's much more challenging only listening to it.
@matileto9836 I know the candidates don't see the written text.
I read and understood, only listening is more difficult, but it was there when she repeated it once or twice. Ex: somervogl I knew that it's Butterfly in Norsk. But her pronunciation sounded strange to me, so it took I while to understand.
I‘m from Germany, but besides German I also speak Low Saxon (another name for Low German) and so this was easy to get besides Sommavoagel for which we say bottervoagel in our Low Saxon/Low German dialect.
The traditional dialects in the eastern Netherlands are Low Saxon dialects as well. That explains why the Dutch man‘s grandmother might say "at home" (to huus, for me) the same way as the Plautdietsch woman.
Yeah, I've been told by a few Dutch people that our language sounds like the eastern dialects in the Netherlands. It's really interesting. I remember hearing someone say "Thuis" for the first time and thinking "Whoa, okay, that must be where we get "T'huus" from,", and then a Dutch person told me that people in the eastern Netherlands say it the same way we do and it made even more sense.
As a born person in Limburg the most southern province of the Netherlands we speak our own language which is in between Dutch en German...most sentences I could even repeat in my local language.. Amazing
I lived in Oirlo for six months and the Dutch down in Limburg is beautiful to listen to.Reminds me of Norfolk in England and the soft way they talk
It‘s funny how the sentence with „ oba mien Voda sien Groutvoda“ is more understandable for me as a Swiss German „ aber min Vater sin Grossvater“. If you would like to have somebody on there that speaks fluently Swiss German, German, French, English as well as some Arab dialects. Please feel free to reach out Bahador
For me as a Fleming it sounded more like some Flemish dialects. Especially the one about being from Canada, and her parents and grandparents as well but her great grand father was born in Russia. It was really close to Flemish Dutch
Technically the area where my great-grandfather was born is in Ukraine now, but I said Russia because it was still in the Russian Empire at the time.
Very cool that you include these language communities in your videos!
Once again, a fascinating video. Thanks, Bahador!
Hi you all! With the help of Luxemburgish (a moselfränkich language), I could understand most of the sentences you proposed! Interesting!
She explained that spazieren means to visit and that the last word means today. The German guy's translation is wrong. She said: I want to visit you. Do you have time today? 9:29
Exactly. She explained to Remco that it was a cognate of the Dutch word "vandaag" which means "today", but Matthias seems to have missed this part, as there is no similar word in German.
Funny that that one is actually derived from a Latin word meaning "to walk".
Yes. Unfortunately this german guy is just stupid. He is maybe a teacher but his behavior is horrible..
I am Dutch and speak, almost , fluently German. I was born in the northern province of Groningen in the Netherlands. The Groningen dialect is a kind of mix of Dutch and German with some ancient saxion words. Nearly the same dialect is also spoken in the north west of Germany. What i hear here, sounds very familiar for me: a mix of Dutch, German and the dialect i am familiar with.
In some swiss german dialects butterfly would be „Summervogel“ witch literally means summer bird as well :)
I am from Germany (from the very western edge) and my local dialect is basically identicial to Plautdietsch it is even called "Platt" or "Platduitsch". I think anyone around my hometown could understand her.
Yeah, Low German was simply the traditional lamguage of the people in the northern third of today‘s German language area, plus some lost north eastern territories (Danzig and Pomerania, West and East Prussia).
Unfortunately it was kind of suppressed in the last centuries and mostly replaced by Standard High German (Prof. Gessinger of Uni Potsdam called this process of replacement of Low Saxon (just later called Low German) by High German an inner colonization similar to the Germanisation of Slavic people).
Me too, my grandparents "proaten and kuuren platt" haha. I could understand everything except "sommervogel" and "mejal". And i find it really cute how "spazieren" has come to mean to meet up. Like a strolling date 🚶♀🚶♂🚶
@@anhi1680 'Mejal' I was able to understand very quick. At some parts they use to say 'Mädel' plus in Dutch language it is 'meisje'. Once I've lived at the border to the Netherlands (at Nijmegen/Kleve) I was used to listen to the local kind of 'lower german' dialect which was very mixed language of Dutch and German. The also used such words as 'Tied' for time. It was very interesting to listen to such conversations!
@@lepeotmit yeah, i realised the similarity to "Mädel" later, but somehow it didn't click.
@@anhi1680 Actually, from what Remco and I both looked up after this, "Mejal" is derived from an Old Prussian word, so it's not a Germanic word at all, but Baltic.
Our (Limburg, part of the Netherlands, neighboring to Germany and Belgium) dialect is part German, part Old-Dutch.The first sentence in Limburgs would be ‘Neit veul kènjer kenne noch Dietsch kalle/sjprèken’. It’s a form of Plat Diets, spoken in Netherlands-Limburg, Belgian-Limburg and Nordrhein Westfalen (Germany). The language itself is called ‘plat’ (plat kalle= speaking dialect)
I guess you should not have asked a Dutch guy from Utrecht, but someone who is used to speaking an eastern Dutch dialect. These dialects have a Saxon origin and are still very related to plattdeutsch and lower German.
Plat Deutsch or Low German was spoken in Westphalia. Low German was close to Netherlandish. Many migrants went in waves from Westphalia to Holland and The Netherlands later among which are my forebears. The VOC was a big employer always looking for hands.
What a delightful episode! It’s fascinating how languages/dialects that must have been more similar in the past have diverged over time, in spite of relatively close geographical proximity. For a Norwegian with some knowledge of German, this was a really fun and exciting ride. Trying to recognise the words was like meeting schoolmates you haven’t seen for 30 (or 50) years. Thank you, Corinna (excellent samples!), Remco, Matthias and Bahador!
Corinna here. Thank you for watching! Glad you enjoyed it. It was really fun.
I am from the Twente region in the Netherlands, close to the border with Germany, and this sounds amazingly similar with Twents. I think we could have a good conversation!
It's possible! Matthias and Remco both said they think with some exposure they'd be able to pick it up fairly quickly, and I've been told by one of my Dutch friends that the Dutch influence we have on our language is very similar to the eastern regions of your country. (And the founder of the Mennonites was Frisian, as well )
Because it is the same Language
I went to an agricultural school in southern Brazil that had an enchage program with the U.S. One Brazilian student that spoke Hunsrück german at home could communicate fairly easily with the Amish/Mennonites in Indiana.
As a native Getman speaker who's also fluent in Dutch, when reading it I get it but hearing it spoken is a totally different story
Great video! You really have expanded. Salute!
Mennonites follow the book from Menno Simons (1496 - 1561) who was born in my hometown Witmarsum in Friesland the Netherlands. The North of Netherlands and Germany spoke Frisian close to Low German and very close to old English..
Woah, great video! That first guys laugh at 3:18 or so is so deep and rich, I LOVE it!
As a German I understood a lot more than the two guys in this video did. And that’s not only because of the written form I feel like.
As a Flemish speaker, I thought I could understand more than the Dutch speaker, because in our dialect, we'll say "zen" instead of "ben" for "I am - Ik ben" so we'll say "Ik zen". Also "mien voda zien groutvoda" should have been easy for the Dutch speaker "mijn vader zijn grootvader"
I grew up near Stuttgart, and in Schwäbisch we would say “meim Vadder sai Großvadder”, so I got that pretty much right away.
When you read it, everything is understandable. That girl has an english/canadian/american accent which distorts everything spoken pretty much. The sommervoagl i find very interessant. It reads like sommervogel (summer bird) a cute probably ancient word for butterfly (schmetterling). But when she spoke it, it sounded more like sommerfeld, which was confusing.
I definitely have a Canadian English accent when I speak it, yes. But as I mentioned in the video, I'm also sure our pronunciation has been influenced by English since we've been here for over 100 years now. I tried my best to pronounce everything as closely as possible to how I've always heard it. And as for that particular word, I don't think I've ever been able to say it quite right. 😅
As a Norwegian, I can confirm that «Sommavoagel» is close to Norwegian. In fact, the Norwegian language was heavily influenced by «platt-tysk» or «Low German» (Plautdietsch) from the High Middle Ages onwards.
So we say «Sommerfugl» («Summerbird», where «fugl» is the cognate of «Voagel»; as is also «fågel» (SE) «fowl» (EN), «fûgel» (FRI), «Foygl» (Jiddisch) etc.
WICH Norwegian language? Bokmål or Nynorsk? Or both?
@@greenhorn6582
Bokmål: Sommerfugl
Nynorsk: Sommarfugl
"Sommervogel" is a typical Swiss-German word.
It's the Danish language in fact. Old Norwegian was more or less replaced due to the union between us.
Mennonites can understand Belgien, Dutch and German newspapers and hear most of them in spoken form - but the other way around is not possible
-cause low German is the root!
I'm an Englishman who grew up in a Low German speaking area Of Germany,aslo speak some Dutch and Norwegian.Understood a lot of it,
"Summer Bird" did throw me a bit
Im a native Dutch speaker from Suriname and The Netherlands,and we can easily speak and understand German,while most Germans have problems understanding Dutch
I'm an L2 German speaker, and I understood about 80% of what Corinna was saying without reading, and 98% once I read the sentences. I would have never got 'Sommavaogel' to mean butterfly; I assumed it meant a type of bird that was particularly seen during summer. And it took a minute after seeing 'mien Voda sien Groutvoda' for the penny to drop that it was a his-genitive phrase-"meinem Vater sein Großvater" and not "mein Vater UND Großvater".
It's really fascinating being able to work out what some of the sound-shifts and changes-in-grammar must have been to make deutsches Hochdeutsch, Plautdietsch, and Nederlands sound *so different*.
Yeah, the languages are so similar and yet so different. It's a strange feeling to read or hear Dutch and be able to pick out the odd word or phrase even though I've never actively studied Dutch, and even more surprising with Afrikaans.
Im from Mexico and grew up speaking plautdietsch and i had never heard that "sommavoagol" is a butterfly. We call it a " flata".
@@jopenner8755 It seems to be some kind of dialect thing. I've always heard "Sommavoagel" for butterfly and "Flautasch" (or however it's spelled) for a moth.
I am a nativ german speaker, but I lived in the Netherlands for almost ten years. And that´s why my netherlands is pretty descent. And I was really surprised that I understood absolutly everything what she said while the two guys had theyr problems here and there. So I guess, it´s the mix what helps putting it together. Like f.e. the word "reden". As a German I understand straight but I knew my dear Dutch Neighbour would stuck there, cause "reden" in Netherland means "reason". Once you get all this "false friends" out of your head it´s really easy to understand this dialect. 🙂
Yeah our language is a chaotic mix of German and Dutch with random English or Spanish, depending on where the speaker is from) thrown in. 😅
Yes, but we have words like "rede" (a somewhat formal speach), "rederijkers" (historical language artists), "redenaar", "redevoering", "grafrede", "troonrede" usw. thus the "talk" meaning of the sound is present in Dutch, just as much as the "reason", "ready" and "anchor place" meanings (just the jump to the right meaning might be a bit further from a linguistic background without German.
As a native German speaker from Saxony, I understand more Plautdietsch in writing than hearing it. Reading works better than listening to it.
I will admit that I definitely have an English accent, since I've had to learn how to actually speak it as an adult (for whatever reason nobody in my family ever spoke it directly with me, even though they spoke it to each other and it wasn't a secret or anything). So if you heard my parents speak, maybe it would be a bit easier to understand.
I'm dutch and I know German and have heard a lot of Limburg dialect. I understood practically all of it instantaneously and I was surprised that it seemed to be so difficult to the participants. But I was helped by the written text, did the participants get that too?
No, they were just listening to me speaking. They didn't see what I had written. Bahador adds the subtitles afterwards.
As a German with some knowledge of Dutch that was pretty interesting. In parts it almost sounds like Swedish or Danish to me. And I also had the same impression when it comes to reading in these languages. I understand way more when it's written than spoken. Dutch is much more similar to German as a spoken language than the others.
I speak dutch and english but i almost understand everything. It sounds like old englisch/Friesian mix with german and dutch. But without knowing every word i can read and understand it pretty quickly
The second sentence I understood as someone who learned German as a second language. "Sommavoagel" is easily read as Summer Bird.
Yeah I also thought that it was 'summer bird' but didn't think that this could mean 'butterfly', as both the Dutch word (Vlinder) and German word (Schmetterling) are very different.
@@MacXpert74 Yeah, I don't know why our word more like the Danish word. I think it's also similar or the same in Frisian. Not sure though.
When you see it written it's easy, but the participants in the video had to go by ear only. The way she pronounced "voagel" sounded nothing like "Vogel" in German, the g sound was completely absent and the vowel was closer to e than o. I'm not surprised they didn't get it.
@@xaverlustig3581 it also doesn't help that I've always had issues pronouncing that word and I'm pretty sure I didn't say it quite right. 😅 But I tried to pronounce everything as closely as possible to how I've grown up hearing it.
Also, the plural is Väajel. So that's different, too.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 In German it's "Vögel". Same thing, the vowel changes for marking the plural, which is a common feature of Germanic languages. (English does it too: goose/geese, mouse/mice).
Amazing that I am deaf and I able to understand germania lingustices+mentals in my mind and I love it!!! (I can 6 languages in the germania languages-families), too afrikaans as an exempel, plus old english as old swedish.
This was easy. I understood everything immediately when she said it. Plattdeutsch, isn't that the dialect spoken in Schleswig and Holstein? In that case, it explains how Danish words appear here, such as "sommerfugl" and smuk. Smuk means beautiful in Danish and mejsje is girl in Dutch, which explains "Mejal".
Another interesting video and I would like to learn more about Mennonite.
Actually "Mejal" seems to come from Old Prussian, so it's not a Germanic word. Remco and I looked it up after recording this. 😅
Words change or get astray, but syntax is absolut German.
As a Swede with three years of high-school German, I found this surprisingly easy to understand.
As a Swede with Norwegian family (who also studied some German in school) I recognised the words and expressions of sommerfugl and "min far sin bestefar".
That's interesting. Swedish who studied German have an easier time understanding then actual German people
@@corywiebe8008Swedish consists of about 30% of Low German loanwords from the Hanse times, and they generally also both have in common that they didn’t undergo the High German consonant shift. Thus without being a loan in any direction Low German tied/tyd and Swedish tid (same pronunciation basically) and LG wi/wy and SV vi (also same pronunciation) are more similar to each other compared to High German Zeit (pronounced tsait) and wir.
Ik gå nu to bedde (Low German for: I go to bed now).
@@TheMichaelKVery interesting, I never knew that about Sweden.I have been studying Spanish just to try and learn another language. Now I'm thinking maybe I should have tried Swedish
@@corywiebe8008 Corinna from the video here. 😊 My main focus at the moment as far as languages is Standard German and Finnish, so I haven't really looked into Swedish yet except for the basics, but when I do read it I can pick out the odd word here and there and kind of stumble through.
I am dutch but i immediately thought of the norwegian word for butterfly/schmetterling/vlinder.
The rest sounds like a mix between german and dutch dialects.
Mejal sounds like the spanish mujer mixed with the word mädel (austrian?)
Mien voda sien groutvoda sounds exactly like in dutch mijn vader zijn grootvader so i was surprised they didn’t get that.
From what Remco and I looked up afterwards, "Mejal" comes from Old Prussian.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 i”m guessing the words mädel, maid, maiden, mädchen, meid and meisje all come from the word mejal..
I am from Groningen in the Northeast Netherlands and we also speak a Low German dialect here: Gronings. Gronings is basically the same as East Frisian Low German. That makes it quite easy.
Besides, I visited Elmira/St Jacobs in Ontario, it was really interesting and the farmers market was huge!
My last name (maiden) is Groening, and I'm Mennonite background, from Russia to Canada in late 1870's.
Many of the earliest Mennonites started out in Friesland and the Northern Netherlands as a religious movement. Then during the religious wars in the region in the 1600s they would flee eastward, being invited with other Dutch and North Sea German protestants into the Kingdoms around the Baltic Sea, in Ukraine, and the Volga region of Russia as time went by to settle lands. This was due to their skills in building infrastructure for recovering farmland from swamps and marshland and to take back land from the sea. Most of the peoples in these regions had no such skills and so it was highly sought after by the crowns of Prussia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Baltic states, and the Russian Empire, and so we moved with other Northwestern Germans to meet the demand and the language evolved from the mixing of the dialects from Frisian, various Low Saxon/German dialects, and Northern Dutch dialects.
Then between the mid-1800s up to WWII many migrated to the Americas in order to escape persecution under the Russian and Soviet rule where, during WWI, we were seen as German spies and internal enemies of the Russian people in the face of anti-German war propaganda; during the Russian Civil War, the Volga peoples faced a manufactured famine in 1918 as the Soviets collectivized farmland and again demonized us as enemies of the state as landowning farmers; and then under Stalin's regime, active pogroms, mass deportations, and famines were faced as part of the anti-Kulaki persecutions that Ukrainians and Kazakh peoples also endured.
@@hoathanatos6179 Great response thanks. Mennonites wrote a lot about their experiences, in dusty archives, in Low German, High German and English. My dad was one of those hard-working farmers, clearing land here in Killarney, Manitoba area, earlier raised in the Lowe Farm area. His descendants continue in like fashion. We, as a people were truly victims of oppression way back (as were many others caught in the humanistic Marxist leadership's death-grip), but trusted God, and also continued strong in charity for the poor of the world.
Hi! Very pleased to meet you "from Groningen". My maiden name was Groening, I speak a little plattdeutsch, have visited Elmira, ON. In 1981 visited Belgium on mission trip, and was listening to Dutch speaking around the table, and was surprised that I could get a little of the gist of what they were saying, which was cool.
Belgian Dutch a.k.a. Flemish can be quite difficult to follow for a northerner like me. Flemish dialects are quite different from standard Dutch and even more from Low Saxon/Low German.
This was very interesting. I am Norwegian, but have lived in the Netherlands and also know German from school. I must say that I actually understood more or less everything, but it is easier when we also get it subtitled. There was one word, spaziren which have changed meaning, which is not do easy to guess. Some of the difficult parts for the Dutch and the German guy are actually easier for Scandinavians. The genitiv form "sien" put in front of the noun can be used in Norwegian. It entered Norwegian and Danish in the middle aged from Low German. The word for girl was a bit difficult to guess, obviously comes from Mädel, but it is a rare word. Maybe she could have tried to articulate the words a bit more clearly.
Actually "Mejal" seems to come from an Old Prussian word, not German or Dutch, which makes sense given the origins of our language. We also have the word "Mäakjen", which I imagine would come from "Mädchen".
As for articulation... Yeah, that's not always my strong point, even in English. 😅 Something I need to get better at. But I tried my best to pronounce the words as properly (i.e. how I grew up hearing them) as possible.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432
That’s interesting about Mejal. Most Low German dialects in Germany today use the word "deern" for girl, but in some like in my area people also say mäken. And that looks directly related to Mäakjen and is also the cognate to Mädchen.
13:58 in Dutch, zijn is indeed the plural. But in many flemish dialects it's used for singular forms instead of "ben".
Like in Brabantian:
Ik zen
Gij zet
Ij/zij is
Wulle zen
Gulle zet
Zij zen
Or in west flemish:
'k zyn
Gy zyt
Y/zy is
Wydder zyn
Gydder zyt
Zydder zyn
For us it's
Ekj sen
Du best
Hee / see / et es
Wie sent
Jie sent
See sent
"See" means either "She" or "They", like "Sie" does in German.
Thank you @sanderd17
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 a thoroughly interesting video... you might like to look at Luxembourgish Lëtzebuergesch as here taught by Jérôme Lulling - they have incorporated French vocab on top of the West Franconian base: ruclips.net/user/clipUgkxQP2n6XH_3bl4xNH-izmqwvqNBdx_jMVB?si=xIgtBnhxPZmBDh-t ruclips.net/user/clipUgkxQP2n6XH_3bl4xNH-izmqwvqNBdx_jMVB?si=xIgtBnhxPZmBDh-t
When you can speak the East Dutch dialects (Twents, Drents, Achterhoeks) things get way more intelligible!
As a speaker of Westphalian Platt this is easy to understand for me.
Nice one. It entertained me very much seeing Matthias from "somewhere in Brandenburg" struggled with the construct mien Voda sien Groutvoda. In our region (Ruhr Area and Westphalia) this is very easy understood as we would say mein Vater sein Großvoda. The standard German would be meines Vaters Großvater (this sounds posh) oder der Großvater von meinem Vater (more colloquial and understood by all Germans).
This seems to be a thing in most western dialects, from the Dutch border up to Switzerland, but not so common further east.
Interesting how the Dutch guy was struggling most. There are in fact multiple Dutch dialects that carry similar words to the ones used in this video. The part where I struggled most was where the 'voag' became 'f' as Corinna said it and so while I could instantly read summerbird (which I would never have connected to butterfly) I completely get how the guys went towards summerfield (which didn't connect any dots either). On a hunch here I'd say that she may not have pronounced the word entirely correct being a native English speaker. The Dutch word for bird is 'vogel' where 'g' sounds similar to Greek/Russian 'Х', a sound that does not exist in English language (Greek sororities in USA actually name this kye?). I would also say that this was probably never a written language, not in Roman writing anyway, as many constructs appear to aim at being phonetic e.g. 'o' for short, 'oa' for middle long 'o' and 'ou' for long 'o' and in particular writing a 'j' for a German pronounced 'g' appears way off.
I tried my best to pronounce everything as close as possible to how I've heard it my whole life, but yes; I've always had difficulty with the word "Voagel" in particular, even when I was younger, and I did say in the video that I didn't think I pronounced it entirely right. 😅 I've had to learn how to properly speak it as an adult because nobody in my family really spoke it directly to me (I don't know why), but the V in general is pronounced like an F in our language, like in German.
Excluding "Voagel" for a minute, though, you are right; I also mentioned in the video that our language wasn't written for a long time, and that they used High German in the church when they wanted to write something. There have been attempts to form a written language but there is still nothing official, so it's a somewhat of a mess. And the reason the J is in the words is because it represents the same sound as it does in German and Dutch, like the word "Ja" ("Jo" for us), and that's the sound we use a lot of the time where you would find the G in German and Dutch, especially at the beginning of words, such as the examples I gave of "Geld" and "Gestern" being pronounced as "Jeld" and "Jestern". And some people do use "oo" instead of "ou", as well. So it really is a big game of knowing how the language sounds and trying to intuit the spelling. (The "oa" is my particular bane.)
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 Oh that's interesting. As I experience it the 'v' is usually pretty hard in German, but it seems that at least the word 'vogel' is an exception to that rule. A striking difference between Dutch and German is in fact that the hardness of the first two consonants is reversed, though granted there are some regions in The Netherlands where 'z' approaches 's', 'v' approaches 'f', and 'g' approaches 'h'.
Official Dutch does not have any phonetic indicators (except for a handful of words taken from French). Whether a vowel is long or short is primarily determined by grammar rules and only when these rules lead to a long vowel becoming short this is 'corrected' by duplicating the vowel. Yet the 'oa' combination is actually not completely unknown. In the Dutch province of Friesland people in rural areas speak what is recognized as a distinct language and for the purpose of phonetics they use the exact same construct in writing. A Frisian phrase that every person in The Netherlands knows is 'oant moarn' and I don't think that requires translation for you ;)
The pronunciation of "oak" threw me off as well. I could immediately understand the written text, but without reading I would not have recognized the word. And the participants could not see the written text either.
it originated from the Frisian and Low German wich are very close related. So, for a true Frisian it's easy to understand. But it's nice to watch the strugle in this video.
As a dutch person from enschede.
It was alot easier to understand. Since in the east of the Netherlands we have a dialect called twents.
And its a branch from the low german/low saxon language!
Or English
Yeah I've been told that our language sounds like how Dutch people from the eastern part of the country speak.
I am from the other side of that border and when I was a boy I heard a lot of Plattdütsch from a place not 10km of yours. I had no problem to understand almost all of her either talk or writing. Bit strange that both guys there had some problems. Strange too, that her talk is so easy to understand in our border region. Unfortunately Platt is dying out in that region very fast.
@@schattensandYeah, Plattdeutsch was suppressed since about the 1650s in Germany in favor of Standard High German. Still in the 1970s practices were reported where children had to wash their mouths with soap for speaking Low German at school…
Even Plattdeutsch was forced mostly as a devaluing name onto the language which was formerly (e.g. in Hanse times) sassesch or sassesche sprake, meaning Saxon / Saxon language. Plattdeutsch became most commonly used after 1650.
@@TheMichaelKNone of what you say does find my approval. Platt was 100 years ago the normal to speak language in whole northern part of Germany. High German was tough first in schools and they were introduced after the "Befreiungskriege" against Napoleon only. Not to have an intellectual population, but to have an average soldier who could read and write. Forget 1650, it is more 1820 to 1850.
since you did this video,you might be interested in German,Dutch and Afrikaans video.
My grandma is Mennonite, but she assimilated into mainstream Canadian culture and married a Roman Catholic French man. Now the language is dead for us, but all the history of the Mennonites fleeing to Canada is very well documented in our family history books.
My parents were raised Old Colony but were never baptized into that church, and I wasn't raised the way they were. But lots of my relatives are still Old Colony or one of the other denominations, and I grew up hearing the language all the time. I've had to learn how to properly speak it as an adult though, because nobody really spoke it directly to me as a kid, for whatever reason.
second example and being from Hessen and from the region of Kassel
I heard directly
Guck mal!
Da ist eine Sommervogel
I speak a Low German variety from the Netherlands (Gronings) and I could have a chat with her very easily. The language is very similar, maybe not the accent but I guess the "structure" is very similar? I'd love to do a video like this with her.
There many thousands of Mennonites that speak that, find someone. 😁 I would like to help you out but I am forgetting a lot. I grew up Mennonite speaking that language but I don't speak it well anymore. I still understand everything
Same… I speak East Frisian Low German, and I could understand all of it but except we use spazeeren like Hochdeutsch spazieren.
@@corywiebe8008 you could get better at it again! practice makes perfect ;)
@@stevehaase9023 cool! I read on your profile that you document East Frisian as spoken in Illinois?! That's super interesting, where can I learn more about that?
@@ikbintom when I see my parents. Wife and kids don't speak a word 😁
I've tried googling an answer to this for over ten years. Finally I got!
If Mennonite comes from Low German Dutch has not had any influence, as Dutch comes from Low German as well.
So the languages have the same 'parent language'.
Having grown up with a dialect from the East in The Netherlands this is not difficult, especially combined with German knowledge you get 95%+ in the first go.
Reading is even easier.
The founder of the Mennonites was Frisian (from Witmarsum), and many of us Mennonites can trace our ancestry back to the Netherlands and northern Germany before our language really formed (Mennonites had already left that region for Prussia before that happened), so I think at least the eastern varieties of Dutch had influence.
In colloquial German there is a similar form to "mien Voda sien Groutvoda" : it would be "meinem Vater sein Großvater", with the first element (my father) in the dative case. It isn't really considered as a "beautiful" German though.
Yeah our language is weird. 😅
Except form 'Schmucke Mejal' sentence or something, as a Belgian speaker of the central Limburgish regional language /dialect, I understood all the rest but I think with some I'd have a more difficult time if I only heard it and not see it.
I am from Ireland but I can also speak English Dutch and German, and I when I read the sentences I was able to understand everything but the pronounciation threw me off a bit. I had to listen quite carefully.This was very interesting video and Mennonite low German kinda looks like a mix between Dutch and German.
Bahador, it would be cool to have Creole languages included!
Good to know about this video
"Mein Vater sein Großvater" (the Rhenish possessive) is not unheard of in some German dialects.
Standard in Luxembourgish...
"Mijn vader z'n grootvader" = "Mijn vaders grootvader" are about equally common in standard Dutch
@@koenth2359 To be clear: it is considered substandard in educated company in Germany. Some years ago, a colleague of mine, a teacher of German, a wonderful lady, pointed at an object in the staff room and a teacher we had been talking about: "Ist das seines?" Me, pointing at another colleague: "Nein, ihm seins." My colleague: *stares at me in utter disbelief, then starts screaming in agony*. Not sure she has forgiven me yet. ;)
Myn vader syn groutvader
Normal modern Low German
@@th60of That's a fun story. Did you say it that way on purpose?
I am a native Dutch speaker, but grew up in an area where Achterhoeks and Gelders is also spoken (Achterhoeks and Gelders both officially belong to Nedersaksisch (Dutch) Niedersächsisch (German), which are both names for Low German / Low Saxon. I can follow about 95% of what the Mennonite speaker says. In the present, Low German has been a little influenced by High German, and by ABN (Standard Dutch) across the Dutch border. Nevertheless, when I speak with someone after crossing the German border, I barely notice the guy's German.
Afrikaans speaker from South Africa here with some German and Dutch background - I could understand some spoken bits, but the written text is easier to understand 🙂
Bahdor, can you make episode aboute Lachouidish? it's a german dialect from the city named Schpfloch, with influence from the jweish language - Yidish.
I am Dutch and I have got Frisian ancestry. I understood a lot of things the Dutch guy didn't get at first, f.i. I got 'summer bird' but ofcourse I didnt know that was a butterfly. And 'mijn vaders grootvader' etc.
That's interesting; Bahador had Frisian in a video some time ago, and the word for butterfly was more or less the same as ours.
I was born Mennonite and am having a hard time speaking now but still understand everything. While growing up we never read and right in Mennonite German, it's always Germany German. We only speak the low Mennonite German. The problem is when they read the German they pronounce it differently but the writing is identical. I think they are using the Dutch alphabet to pronounce the German writing
Yeah, I mentioned in the video that there is still no official way to write our language, just a couple of unofficial ways.
I understood "oba mien Voda sien Groutvoda" as "both my father's grandfathers" at first, then realized that that meaning of "oba" is Russian, and German "aber" would be more likely.
"Oba" is "Aber", yes. We tend to cut off the R at the end of words and turn it into an A. "Sea"/"Sehr" and "Mea"/"Mehr" are some other examples.
Hi @BahadorBlast It would be great if you can arrange a video on Sanskrit and Hebrew comparison
"sin" and "ör" (or variants thereof) are quite commonly used in "Lower German" instead of the Germanic genitive (possessive genitive), i.e.
Pit sin Hus [ Pit's house, Pits Haus, Pits huis]
Andrea ör bauk [ Andrea's book, Andreas Buch, Andreas boek]
Wilhelm sin For [ Wilhelm's father, Wilhelms Vater, Willems vader ]
and you hear it even sometimes if they speak Standard German (especially but not only from kids). i.e.
Pit sein Haus
Andrea ihr Buch
Wilhelm sein Vater
I really don't understand, why the (supposedly north) German took so long to understand that part.
Btw: "High German" (Hochdeutsch) is a classification of languages south of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses in the mid or south of Germany. These languages underwent the High German consonant shift, the Lower German languages and Dutch did not (neither did the languages of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes). If you refer to the standard language, then say "Standard German" or "Standard High German". Most Germans misuse this term, too, and are surprised when they realize that Bavarians and the people in Baden Württemberg in fact do speak High German when they talk in their non intelligible "babble" ... but they do not speak Standard (High) German !
Hmmm 🤔. It's really interesting to hear and read those types of content. I really would like to be involved. I'm a born russian and grow up in germany. I understand some low german, frisian, some Germanic languages, russian and other slavic languages. But not fluent or in a professional or academic way.
Interesting video for someone like me, whose mother's family were all Mennonites and settled in Kansas and Oklahoma after a migration similar to the one described by Corinna, the woman now living in Canada. The Mennonite language has been lost in my family tree (neither my cousins nor I speak or understand it). But as a child, I remember my mother speaking a mix of English and Plautdietsch with her parents. In terms of DNA / ancestry analysis, the 23&me website now asks if you have any Mennonite relations -- I imagine that information assists them in tracing your ancestry, i.e., your countries of origin.
Corinna here. 😊 Yes, my family has been here in Canada since the 1800s / 1900s. Most of my ancestry can be traced back to northern Germany and the Netherlands, but also Russia, Ukraine and Poland. And one of my uncles also told me that he was looking through records at a library once and saw some that traced at least that side of the family to 1400s Estonia, might have a drop or two of Estonian and Finnish blood in me as well. As for the language, both of my parents and most of my aunts, uncles and cousins can speak it, but some of them can't. And I myself am having to properly learn it as an adult because it wasn't spoken directly to me as a kid (I don't know why).
And also, I've done 23&me, but it didn't ask me about any Mennonite relation. I wonder if that's a recent update.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432Yes I think it's an update-- when I added my brother to 23&me this year, that question was asked. But I don't remember that question when I added myself a few years ago.
Matthias what a nice surprise to see you here :)
Oh this is fun. I am Dutch, speak "normal" Dutch, but my mothertongue is a local dialect (from the southwest, the province of Zeeland), and I can understand most of it, because I am used to exchanging vowels in words. That helps. I think speaking a dialect helps in going back to the roots of words. Medieval texts in what is the ancestor of modern Dutch are a piece of cake to read for me, expecially when I read them aloud.
I've never really studied Dutch but if I hear it or read it I can pick out the odd word or phrase. Same with Afrikaans. It's such a strange feeling to kind of / sort of understand little pieces of languages you haven't learned.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 Do you understand Dutch or Afrikaans better and compared to them is German easier or harder to understand?
@@sauerkraut4353 Written, I'd say I understand Dutch and Afrikaans about the same; spoken, Dutch is a bit easier, because the pronunciation is closer to our language. I personally understand German the most but that's probably because I've been learning it on and off since I was a teenager. But even some older people might find German easier because our language wasn't written until relatively recently so German was used to write instead.
@@runningaroundaimlessly432 Very interesting, Would you recommend learning German to help with Plautdietsch or is it better to try and learn it from scratch, Only my grandparents speak it.
@@sauerkraut4353 I think it could help. Of course there are differences between High and Low, but there are also a lot of similarities in vocabulary and such. A lot of other words are more or less the same, just pronounced and spelled a bit differently, like the initial G in a lot of words being replaced by J as I mentioned in the video, or B being replaced by W (we say "Läwen" and "Schriewen" instead of "Leben" and "Schreiben", for example). It wouldn't hurt to learn Standard, at any rate. And both Matthias and Remco said they thought they'd pick it up fairly quickly with some more exposure.