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I have some English knowledge as a non native speaker, and dutch was like Chinese for me, until some said something similar to this.

Not that I can speak or write anything but sometimes some isolated words make sense for me because of the English similarity

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There are some somewhat systematic vowel correspondences -- easier for Dutch → German than for Dutch → English but maybe still interesting to know about. For example, as an English speaker who had studied German, written Dutch made a lot more sense for me when I learned that Dutch ui corresponds to German au (for example huis/Haus (Eng. house), uitgang/Ausgang (Eng. *outgoing)). Although so does ouw (bouw/Bau, bouwen/bauen, vrouw/Frau).

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