Is Dutch or German closer to English?

Why is Dutch called Dutch?

Dutch is a Germanic language like English and German.

Germanic languages, like Latin, Norse and Greek, have had common ancestry. The people who speak the Germanic languages today share a common set of ancestors, with several linguistic and cultural differences from place to place, but also a lot of similarities.

The word Dutch comes from ancient Germanic word for "people" or "nation", the Old High German word for "nati" (in modern Norwegian this same word is still used for "nation"). This name was given because during the height of Roman imperial rule in the late Roman Republic, the inhabitants were often called "the Dutiles" (from duta, meaning "wisdom").

The term Dutch originated in the Low Countries in the Middle Ages, and was gradually replaced by the Dutch names Nederland and Holland (meaning "Lower Netherlands"). The Low Countries was the name for the Dutch-speaking provinces of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, including parts of modern-day Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, North Brabant, Utrecht, Friesland and Groningen.

Since the beginning of European history, there have been many different tribes of the Teutons. There are numerous different theories regarding what caused the split in the Germanic people; some say it was due to geographical considerations while others speculate that it had something to do with race.

After hundreds of years of fighting one another, the Teutons all finally became united under one single empire. They then began to spread into neighboring lands, establishing territories known as germanie ("Germania") and vaderland ("Fatherland"), each of which eventually came to be called a state, or staat ("state") in modern terms. Eventually, the tribes would come to speak the same language and be unified under the same ruler.

Old map of the Low Countries (Middle Ages) from Wikicommons. In the Roman Empire, various ethnic Germanic tribes were located throughout the Empire. Over time, however, some of these Germanic tribes formed a cultural unit under the names of the Gothic, Lombard, Saxon, Visigoth, Frisian, Anglian, Vandals and Burgundians.

By the sixth century CE, the Roman Empire, now divided into Western and Eastern Empires, also contained two groups of Germanic people: the Romans and the Vandals.

Is it OK to speak English in Netherlands?

It is always better to go in the Netherlands.

They are so friendly and willing to learn English.

My friend told me that they think it's normal to talk English while here and they don't mind it. She even has a problem with the people who don't know Dutch yet but pretend they know English for tourists. She finds it insulting and makes it worse by speaking very bad English herself.

What do you think? Is it normal to speak English in a country where you don't speak the language? I went to Thailand last year (not speaking English) and found it strange when people kept trying to speak to me in Thai but I refused to speak any Thai.e. A bit rude, no matter how polite they were! I'd say its perfectly fine to speak English here. If they think its rude they should ask politely why not instead of making an issue about it! If they don't understand English, its perfectly normal and perfectly reasonable to not speak it to them. We did the same thing in the US - we can speak English and they speak our native language too. Its good to speak English because most Europeans have little chance to interact with people who don't speak their own language. But at the same time, I wouldn't expect them to speak English to me, because that's an additional barrier which I already face just by being different from the rest.

A little off topic, but I don't think it's correct to say that the Netherlands are very welcoming to everyone. The article is simply not correct. The whole country isn't the same as the city of Amsterdam, and even Amsterdam isn't welcoming all visitors equally, at least not legally. Not in the way a tourist from abroad might believe.

It would make more sense for the article to explain that not speaking Dutch in the Netherlands is probably fine as long as it doesn't get in the way of communication or business. I live in the Netherlands. What you are doing isn't rude at all, it is expected. As an English-speaker living in the Netherlands, this is a bit weird to hear.

Is Dutch or German closer to English?

This week, the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee published a report on the state of the UK's science and technology base.

Its conclusions were not entirely encouraging, and they also included a recommendation for an examination of the country's scientific capabilities (although, to be fair, the committee's chair was rather more positive than that). But one of the most interesting parts of the report was its comment on the origins of the UK's scientific language.

The committee made a distinction between two types of scientific language, the 'scientific English', which it argued is the language of scientific discourse, and the 'native language', which it described as the language of scientific communication. It argued that the native language was the German or the Dutch, and said that we have gone too far in trying to emulate them: We have developed a set of scientific language tools that are highly effective and very familiar to our scientists, and that help them communicate their results to each other and to the world. These tools are well-established and well-used within the United Kingdom, and we have to a large extent failed to maintain and adapt them for use in the UK and to the UK's specific research culture. Instead, our approach has been to build our own toolkit, borrowing ideas from other cultures (the US for example) but not necessarily copying them directly.

A common example of this is the use of the word 'molecule', which is sometimes used to describe the smallest unit of an atom. The committee is concerned that the word is borrowed from the US (in fact, the UK has a strong influence on the US as a result of the Anglo-American Research Council, and the fact that the UK is in the EU), and that it is often used as a substitute for the term 'atom'.

Interestingly, the committee also expressed concern about the use of 'language', which it says is the product of centuries of language development, change and evolution. It is therefore likely to be influenced by historical events and social influences, including politics. This is a nice reminder of how much history we can find in the use of language, and the committee's concern for the future of science in the UK is a good one.

What language is mostly spoken in the Netherlands?

The percentage is the proportion of people who speak Dutch as their mother tongue at home.

Dutch most commonly spoken is DUTCH: 2.7% (1 in 36 people), or 0.6% ( 1 in 165 people) of total population;
Second most is AMSTERDAM GIDSALVIE : 1.4% ( 1 in 68 people), or 0.5% ( 1 in 204 people);
Third most commonly spoken is FLEMISH : 1.3% ( 1 in 77 people), or 0.4% ( 1 in 258 people);
Fourth, and 5th most commonly spoken are SOUTHERN NETHERLANDS : 1.0% ( 1 in 100 people), or 0.4% ( 1 in 245 people);
And most spoken language ROTTERDAM : 1.0% ( 1 in 106 people), or 0.