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Comment by hirvi74 | Hacker News Reader

I studied German for years and I dabbled in Swedish just to get a sample of what the language was like.

I was surprised how closely related Swedish and English are. In my opinion, I think Swedish is closer to English than German even. I still think Dutch is closest to English, and data tends to agree, but Swedish's similarities, minus being a declarative language and a few other aspects, really caught me off guard.

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"I still think Dutch is closest to English, and data tends to agree"

I'd be curious to see the data. I can understand a bit of german based on my very limited knowledge of dutch, but I struggle in dutch despite speaking english and actively seeking to learn the language.

I find that knowing french is more helpful than english when it comes to dutch. (e.g. "vind je" is "trouves-tu" but it's "do you find" rather than "find you" in english. "ik heb dorst" is "j'ai soif" but it's "I'm thirsty" rather than "I have thirst" in english)

I had a similar experience. I taught immersion summer camps in French when I was in college. At a teacher training session, we were paired with the Swedish camp to try out our lesson plans on each other. I was shocked by how comprehensible Swedish was to me as an English (and French) speaker.

I spent a few summers as a camper/credit student at the Finnish language village (I assume it’s the same set of language villages you taught at), which is where the Swedish camp was (is?) after the Finnish sessions were complete. One of the Finnish counselors stayed on and learned enough Swedish during the one-week break between Finnish and Swedish camps to be able to muddle through being a Swedish camp counselor!

The French Voyageur program looked super fun, they stopped by our camp for some soccer, dinner, and sauna once, had a great time with them.

Fries is apparently closer to English than Dutch. For me learning Dutch wasn’t too difficult, perhaps due to my Yorkshuh background. Lots of common words with my dialect.

> I still think Dutch is closest to English

Frisian is very similar to English

One rhyme demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English:

"Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages

(Frisian: "Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")

Interestingly, English has become a world language, while Frisian must fear extinction. 10 centuries ago, neither development would be predictable.

Predictions a year out are a crap shoot, I think all bets are off when we get to a thousand!

Well, as long as humanity itself survives to 3021, neither English, nor Spanish, nor Chinese are likely to be gone. Even Quechua is likely to persist.

Languages of massive empires rarely die out; they might be transformed (such as when Latin gave birth to an entire family or related languages), but outright disappearance is typically not their fate.

The curious thing about English is that it gained a massive role after spending almost a thousand years of its previous existence as a niche language spoken on a small island on the edge of Europe.

"I still think Dutch is closest to English"

The language we speak here in the US is pretty close to English...

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