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Do you find vocabulary easy in Dutch, as a native English speaker.


Hedonologist

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As a native English speaker I find that one respite of learning Dutch is that there is so much vocabulary in common. English is a Germanic language and any German student will notice the high level of vocabulary in common, but in Dutch it seems that the percentage is even higher.

If a word is similar in English and German, then it's bound to be similar in Dutch too, and there are some words like 'Cube' that are only similar in Dutch (Dutch: Kubus vs German: Wurful)

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  • 1 month later...

Definitely! Now that I'm staying in the Netherlands I can finally see the similarities! Like for example: train, lamp, cat, etc. The pronunciation in dutch is so similar to the one in English, but it can be kinda confusing for me at times, mostly because English isn't my mother language.

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What about spoken dutch? I find that I still have a bit of trouble when listening to dutch speakers, but newspapers are a breeze these days. Even after studying some words I find that spoken too fast they will pass by me, but written text not as much.

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  • 2 months later...

Yeah, some dutch people speak dutch too fast :)  But it's funny to hear how similar some dutch words are (to their English counterparts), like for example when they say a word that sounds a lot like (sorry), that they say when they bump into you or something like that.  I was capable to catch some words when I was there, like ''train'' and ''nose''. 

But I believe this similarity can be dangerous, because just like happens in Spanish with the false friends, the same thing happens with dutch, because there are several words that are spelled the exact same way as some English words, but their meaning bin dutch is completely different to their meaning in English!  Quite dangerous if you ask me!

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