r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Electrical-Aspect-13 • 2d ago
Unsing "old english" to try to speak with people from Friesland (Netherlands). Video
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u/Kees_Fratsen 2d ago
Bizarre. Amazing interaction, both interesting and wholesome
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u/habilishn 2d ago
watching this as a german, i think i could understand everything too. i hope i didn't get fooled by the subtitles, but i think i understood it just by the sound. any other germans feel the same? i mean it is very simple words, if it would be more complicated it wouldn't work anymore probably... but this, it was easy!
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u/DiceHK 2d ago
I speak English and German. Pretty easy to understand
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u/bobbylaserbones 2d ago
Common goods like for example bread and milk tend to have pretty similar names across many countries
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u/Jermine1269 1d ago
From what I understand, English is 2/3rds German, 1/3rd French, and a bit of Norse Viking sprinkled over the top for flavor.
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u/Mckingsy 2d ago
I speak Dutch, German and English. Not Frisian though. Could still understand it without subtitles
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u/BizarroMax 2d ago
American learning German. I recognized very few English words, but several German cognates.
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u/woutomatic 2d ago
tbh he doesn't understand that much. He understands 'brown', 'cow', 'milk' and 'cheese'. Not the context.
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u/Cocotte123321 2d ago
He understands more words than most people out at 10pm on the weekend where I live, and they speak the same language
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u/Celindor 2d ago
He would've understood as much if the host would've spoken English, German, maybe even a Scandinavian language.
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u/OGLizard 2d ago
If you ever watch videos of people that are speaking different languages in the same family, that's about the extent of it. You get a few clues. Polish and Serbian, or Spanish and Romanian for example. It's not the same language, but the roots are there enough that structure and occasional words mean the same thing.
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u/Entersprite 2d ago
So he's basically imitating a drunk scottish tourist.
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u/BamberGasgroin 2d ago
Or just a Scottish tourist looking for a broon coo, richt noo, tae mulk in his bothy.
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u/Tinne_Gaslobby 2d ago
Regular Dutch and Regular English are also very similar. This is why the Dutch and people from Flanders speak English so well. English is basically a grammatically very simplified version of Dutch with some words being different but a lot of them are the same/similar too.
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u/Noobnesz 2d ago
That's why even without learning Dutch, you should be able to understand some sentences in Dutch.
A famous example: "We hebben een serieus probleem."
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u/Wild_Potato_7470 2d ago
No it’s cause most things here are in English, like 80% we watch on tv, the music we hear….that’s the reason. We grow up with the English language here. What you’re saying about English, we could say the same for German and French. Dutch is all of those put into a blender
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u/realGuybrush_ 4h ago
In fact, there are a lot of similar words in English and German as well. They look different at first, but are etymologically very close and just sort of bent a little, and if you know patterns of this change, understanding and learning German becomes much easier. 't' sometimes replaced by 'z' (pronounced as 'ts'), 'i' with 'eue' (oi), 'v' with 'b', 'ee' with 'ie' (ee). For example: zu - to, feuer - fire, brennen - burn, liebe - love, etc. Also tier - deer, but "tier" means "beast" or "animal" in German, but, since deers apparently were very common on Great Britain, they were simply called beasts.
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u/4me2knowit 2d ago
I was told that a Friesland fisherman could understand a geordie fisherman
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 2d ago
Probably can tbh. Geordies share a bit of dialect from Scandinavia. Not just Holland but Norwegian too, for example the Geordie for "home" is "hyem," like the Norwegian "hjem." And Geordie for "go" is "gaan," just like the Dutch. Scandinavian languages share a root with ye olde English, and so does Geordie. Whilst most of the rest of England softened their vowels over time, Geordies didn't, so they still pronounce "town" as "toon" as people would have done centuries ago elsewhere in Britain. It's a similar pronunciation of vowels as in Scandinavia.
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u/4me2knowit 2d ago
Up until the act of union scots that wanted to go to Europe went to NL. I was told that a but ‘n ben (a simple dwelling) is derived from buiten en binnen meaning it only had an outside and an inside
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 2d ago
Ha the But 'n' Ben always reminds me of The Broons comics. They were always off to their But 'n' Ben in the country.
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u/6usu6rper6 2d ago
There was just something about the old man that made him excited so much, made me smile while watching the entire conversation.
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u/smalltowngrappler 2d ago
The crazy thing is that both are easier to understand for me as a modern Swede then Danish is.
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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 2d ago
Even I understand his Old English and I'm from North East Germany.
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u/Feeyyy 2d ago
Same but it's probably bc we also understand modern English and the Old Elnglish words sound either German-ish or English. idk if that old man does speak English as well.
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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 2d ago
That's what I also had in mind but still Lower German is particularly similar to Dutch in Old-English.
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u/Bouldur 2d ago
Friesland is a semi-detached bit of the Netherlands up in the north. Its inhabitants are mostly looked upon as a parent looks upon a pretty and clever child with ‘issues’. Friesland is mostly known for a liquid form of euthanasia called ‘Beerenburg’. Tourists are welcomed and are usually permitted to leave alive. The monk Bonifatius was a notable exception but to be honest, he was a bit of a bore.
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u/unshavenbeardo64 2d ago
My dog is looking confused why i'm laughing so hard right now. Well done sir/madam!.
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u/Sophie_Love_2001 2d ago
This hurts cause it's true... imma leave my frisian roots here in the comments
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u/AmplifiedScreamer 2d ago
Thank you for crushing my self esteem. I am neither clever nor pretty. I am Frisian though.
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u/Darksaiyajin666 2d ago
As north german i understand this. It sounds like "Plattdeutsch“. 😅
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u/habilishn 2d ago
ah yes, i commented this further up too, i could understand it too! born in lower saxony, maybe thats why? wonder if a bavarian would understand it.
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u/TheLyingNetherlander 2d ago
How nice. That cow statue is in my birth place Leeuwarden. It’s known as Us Mem or Our Mum in English, representing the importance of dairy for Fryslan in previous decades/centuries.
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u/No-Paleontologist260 2d ago
Friesland is not in the north of Holland. North and South Holland are in the west of the country called the Netherlands.
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u/die_andere 2d ago
Funnily enough there used to be Frisians in north holland.
https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friezen_(vroege_middeleeuwen)
The province of Groningen is incorrectly shown as currently part of Frysia. But it used to be part of the same culture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisia
It is a fascinating region though.
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u/Wild_Potato_7470 2d ago
Yeah just cut it out please. We use Holland and the Netherlands as synonyms ourselves
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u/cheese_bruh 2d ago
It was a lot more common back then to refer to all of the Netherlands as Holland
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Daan-Bakbanaan 2d ago
North and South holland are provinces of the Netherlands. Collectivly some people call both these provinces "holland". Friesland on its own is also a province. Wich is located in the north of the Netherlands. (Not Holland)
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u/jncheese 2d ago edited 19h ago
West Friesland is in the North of Holland, but also in the mideast of Noord Holland, which is in the Midwest of the Netherlands. While Friesland is in the north of the Netherlands, West of Groningen, which in turn is west of Oost Friesland, or Ost Friesland as the Germans like to call it because it is in fact not in Holland or The Netherlands for that matter, but in Germany.
So there.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Leonos 2d ago
Generally?
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u/icallitjazz 2d ago
So you just deleted your comments where you were dropping the wiki link. My question was: Why do you keep dropping the wiki when it disproves you ? Before the article even starts it prefaces that its just a region of Netherlands and not the whole country. And then in the map it shows a different region then Friesland, that we see in the video. So i have no idea why you drop the link like you just won the debates. You should maybe read it first ?
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u/Leonos 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is the text from the wiki link I was referring to.
The name Holland has frequently been used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands.[3] This casual usage is commonly accepted in other countries, and is even employed by many Dutch themselves.[4]
So, this quote doesn’t disprove me. But too many people wanted to be correct and to only accept the name Netherlands, so I just gave up. I am not going to spend the whole day trying to convince random people.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/icallitjazz 2d ago
I did. Thats why i didnt understand just dropping the link that disproves your claim. What they dropped was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland now, what it says first and foremost is this disclaimer : “This article is about a region of the Netherlands. For that country as a whole, see Netherlands. For other uses, see Holland (disambiguation).” Now if that dipshit (or you) would have opened the link and read those first word , then clicked on the “disambiguation” it would lead you to this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_(disambiguation) that has the fallowing information : “Holland may refer to the Netherlands as a whole, in informal contexts and sports events “. And that is the dipshits point they were trying to make, but were using the link that just proved the opposite. So yeah smart-ass, why dont you read it first ?
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u/baconring 2d ago
My grandfather's ancestors came from Friesland. Surname is swarthout which means blackwood (newer spelling) came to the America's in the 1600s. The amount of Dutch influence during that time is unreal. Before, during and after the Revolutionary War. A swarthout's blue jacket during the Revolutionary War was used to help create the first American flag flown during a battle. I also believe the Friesland have the Roman's the hardest time and couldn't get them to surrender. I apologize. You just never see anything about Friesland.
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u/AngryYowie 2d ago
I met a guy from there whilst hiking the White Mountains in the US. He looked like one of the tree people from LOTR's.
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u/FucktardSupreme 2d ago
Well there goes my dream of time traveling to the past and ruling the world in my native tongue
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u/Royweeezy 2d ago
Now turn on the subtitles and see what it thinks is being said. Kinda interesting..
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u/Justicar_91 2d ago
Hang on. That's Eddie Izzard!