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Re: Axl's back on his feet again (sort of).
polluxlm wrote:I'm confused. I met some Belgians on holiday and they said they spoke flemish, which to me was very close to German. It definitely wasn't Dutch as I meet hollanders every week through work. I see on wiki only 1% of the country speaks German (I assume the protestants), and these folks were definitely not that.
Impressive that you were able to hear the vocals.
Flemish is Dutch with a different accent (that might be more reminiscent of German to some, we use same G and R sounds as the Germans, which is different from the G and R sounds used in the Netherlands.). The part of the Netherlands north of the river Maas is what's usually refered to when Dutch people speak of Holland, and their accent is distinctly different from the southern part of the Netherlands, which gets more extreme as you go into Flanders.
I'd say the difference in accent between Dutch and Flemish is about as extreme as the difference between Scottish and 'proper' English, so much so that if you don't speak the language you might not be able to notice that their one and the same.
Furthermore, the Dutch have a much thicker, more recognizable accent than the Flemish when speaking English.
I'm even more confused now! 
I know a little bit of German, and to me Flemish sounded like a dialect of German. Aloin instead of alein, that type of thing. Dutch on the other hand sound like a completely different language. I can understand parts of a text since there are a lot of Scandi, English and German words in there, but tell me to say something in Dutch and I'm clueless. I guess that accent must be pretty strong if you are both essentially speaking Dutch. If you were to ask me I'd say the difference was that of English and Gaelish, not English and Scottish.
Question, can you understand German as a Flemish speaker?
Re: Axl's back on his feet again (sort of).
Question, can you understand German as a Flemish speaker?
This is getting awfully off-topic, but anyway... 
. I can usually get the gist of what is being said, but I really need to concentrate. I'll also often get the intended tense wrong.
Do you happen to know from which part of Flanders these people were? Even within our very small region, there's enormous variation in accents (we often subtitle people that speak their native dialect on TV that live no more than 100km from the most populous area). I'm going to go out on a limb and say there were either from West-Flanders (the area near the coast, which has the thickest, most pronounced and specific accent), or from Limburg - close to the German and Dutch borders, where they speak something that resembles a bit of a mix (more sing-song than German - like the Dutch -, but for certain things - like 'mich' and 'dich' - they abuse actual German words by giving them a slightly different meaning).
How do you perceive the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans then?
*edit* Interesting historical tidbit, but German, Dutch (and Flemish) stem from a late medieval language called "Diets" (which in itself derived from "Frankisch". Diets is most immediately responsible for the development of Flemish and the dialect spoken in West-Germany, the two of which developed first from it. Dutch developed from Flemish, with 'Northern' (Frisian and Danish) influences. Afrikaans in turn was derived from a mix of early Dutch and Flemish (although the latter to a lesser extent). "Diets" is also the reason why the different languages have such confusing names when translated:
"Dutch" = "Nederlands" in Dutch, but "German" = "Deutsch" in German. Both "Dutch" and "Deutsch" come from "Diets", etymologically speaking. Need to be more confused? Pennsylvania Dutch, as spoking in Amish country in the US is actually German, not Dutch... and Yiddish too is closely related.
Check out the middle graphic in this image to see how the accents overlap the borders: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … enelux.PNG
The yellow and green parts in the upper graphic (Nederfrankisch and Nedersaksich) make up the parts that constitute what we today call "Dutch" (including Flemish).
Re: Axl's back on his feet again (sort of).
Do you happen to know from which part of Flanders these people were? Even within our very small region, there's enormous variation in accents (we often subtitle people that speak their native dialect on TV that live no more than 100km from the most populous area). I'm going to go out on a limb and say there were either from West-Flanders (the area near the coast, which has the thickest, most pronounced and specific accent), or from Limburg - close to the German and Dutch borders, where they speak something that resembles a bit of a mix (more sing-song than German - like the Dutch -, but for certain things - like 'mich' and 'dich' - they abuse actual German words by giving them a slightly different meaning).
I think they were from Mechelen since the man was a fan of their football team.
How do you perceive the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans then?
Both sound like Dutch. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
*edit* Interesting historical tidbit, but German, Dutch (and Flemish) stem from a late medieval language called "Diets" (which in itself derived from "Frankisch". Diets is most immediately responsible for the development of Flemish and the dialect spoken in West-Germany, the two of which developed first from it. Dutch developed from Flemish, with 'Northern' (Frisian and Danish) influences. Afrikaans in turn was derived from a mix of early Dutch and Flemish (although the latter to a lesser extent). "Diets" is also the reason why the different languages have such confusing names when translated:
"Dutch" = "Nederlands" in Dutch, but "German" = "Deutsch" in German. Both "Dutch" and "Deutsch" come from "Diets", etymologically speaking. Need to be more confused? Pennsylvania Dutch, as spoking in Amish country in the US is actually German, not Dutch... and Yiddish too is closely related.Check out the middle graphic in this image to see how the accents overlap the borders: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … enelux.PNG
The yellow and green parts in the upper graphic (Nederfrankisch and Nedersaksich) make up the parts that constitute what we today call "Dutch" (including Flemish).
Ah, that explains the Dutch/Deutsch thing! Figures, I always thought the Dutch and the Germans looked a lot more alike than countries further south. Must be a close kinship when they both derive their languages from the same root. Despite this they don't like each other very much though. 
And just so this doesn't become completely off topic:
