Old English Language | Can American, Australian, and Non-Native English speaker understand it? | #2
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 พ.ค. 2024
- Do you understand the Old English language? In this video, American, Australian, and Non-Native English speaker from Poland try to understand Old English by reading sentences written in Old English. It’s part of the Language comparison series on my channel, in which we explore the mutual intelligibility phenomenon between closely related languages.
🤓It's Part 2 of our Old English challenge.
👀Watch Part 1 here: • Old English Spoken | C...
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#English
Old English vs German | the video is ready! 🙀 → th-cam.com/video/SFPBJRkFVTc/w-d-xo.html
I am a Norwegian and figured them all out immediately.
No to 'understanding'.
It would have been some etymological root of the current words 'verstehen' and 'versed' (i.e. being well-versed in a subject).
That should've been an easy one to get right.
@8:12 You pointed out that "hāl" cognates with the word whole, and I think in this context it means healthy? But I just read "hāl" phonetically as hale, which also means healthy in English. Is that a coincidence?
I lowkey wanna be in a video if you ever redo this. Ain't really got a channel or anything but I'm down to hop on a video chat and just flow with it.
I'm german btw :)
Also isn’t hāl connected somehow to the word “heil” meaning salvation or in dutch “heilig” meaning holy.
Bottom line: anyone speaking a modern Germanic language (be that German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic etc) would understand old English better than a modern English speaker.
True. It's because English adopted many Latin words. However, there is an abundance of Latin derived words which have Germanic synonyms / counterparts. ..
I think the same, I am a non-native Norwegian speaker and the sentence was quite easy to understand, except the feoh part. Butan is actually the Scnadinavian utan/uten, it's the same thing, they just added a b at the beginning. I don't think this is closer to German, England had an entire century with danes and norwegians in it in the middle ages.
@JET Snr You are right. It is a great language in its modern and older version coming from England which has a rich history but where is the link here?
What are you trying to say? The interesting fact about English is its abundance of words which is due to the impact of Latin (plus French) and Germanic lsnguages/ Dialects (Saxon, Frisian, Danish etc.). The fusion / influence of several languages (Germanic, Latin, Celtic) is one of the reasons why the English grammar had automatically been simplified for centuries as Merchants who spoke French, Saxon etc. had to communicate with each other. Thus English eventually became a comparibly simple language to study and (besides its geographic distribution due to Britain's history) to be used as global lingua franca....
Adri Szabó I mean yes but don’t forget the Anglo saxons they were from northern Germany.
@@marchauchler1622 English is a Germanic Language.
The older the English, the more similar to German
FACTS
It’s is baiscally German, to be correct Anglo-Saxon in fact the have of the englisch roayls are half German.
Well, it's no surprise since English is a GERMANIC language.
@@Puleczech well, despite being considered a germanic language, it's strongly latinised as remnant of roman occupation in ancieng times. Ironically, even german is strongly latinised while staying a germanic language. (I learned more german in latin class than in german class, I always had the feeling.)
Saying that northern germanic languages like norwegian or swedish are truest to our common linguistic ancestors is a wild guess, though, because I know nothing aboug theif lknguistic history.
Brilliant Observation that. Seriously, I thought the same thing!
As a Dutch person who fluently speaks Dutch, German and English, all three sentences where fairly easy to understand. Old English sounds like a combination of these three languages.
I am fluent in Norwegian, so I am surprised to see that there are many words from modern day Norwegian language in old English.
@@ketotodadze2482 It’s your Viking ancestors. They brought a lot of words to English.
Yes and when I (German) learnt Dutch, I said that it's like a mixture of German and English! Now I think that old English is a mixture of German, Dutch and Scandinavian 😅
@@judyp.hat’s certainly the case - old english was the language of the anglo-saxons after all (influenced by long periods of norse occupation); if you’re interested, listen to some middle english - the difference is v interesting, it’s a very odd language, spoken in a very strange accent 😂 it’s also pretty much intelligible to modern english speakers
@@billder2655 thank you 😊
I can speak Lower Saxon fluently and could understood everything! It did not seem like an different language to me! This is amazing.
True, it's most close to Frisian and to the Saxxon dialects, I think. (Grew up with low Saxxon as well, in Eastern Holland)
@@simonevanmuiswinkel9464 Beste Simone, Nedersaksisch is wordt niet gesproken in Holland maar in Oost-Nederland.
That's because the two largest tribal groups in the Anglo Saxon confederacy were the Angles from Denmark and Saxons from northern coastal Germany. You understand Saxon because you ARE a Saxon!
You need to get this guy to speak with a Frisian speaker or with German and Dutch speakers, it will be interesting
Get a Swiss German speaker on there, too. I’ve noticed that the dialect sometimes helps with vocabulary.
A Frisian speaker is likely already trilingual with Dutch and English, if you are able to get someone from the Netherlands. It would be difficult to find a monolingual Frisian speaker.
If it is a Frisian speakers in Germany, then they also would likely be trilingual with German, Frisian and English.
Yes, seriously. I'm a Swedish speaking rune enthusiast who speaks English and "studied" German for a while. I understood almost everything, a lot thanks to german.
Old norse and runes made me understand "feoh". The first rune in the younger futhark is "fe", and it means cattle. It was called "fehu" in the elder futhark. So in the anglo-frisian futhark? Feoh, of course! :)
Icelandic would work peobably the best
Norbert should pay more attention to Kashubian and Silesian conversations he did, even check Polish with old Germanic words preserved in a "Slavic refrigerator". Buten - sl. csb. outside, blumy - flowers, ratusz [rada-council + (h)us-house] - town hall etc.
It's just crazy to me that - judging from the comments - German speakers/Dutch people/Scandinavians seem to understand Old English better than native English speakers do.
Although English is in the same language group as German and Scandinavian, for some reason they have become very different.
@@felixroseweiss3066 Perhaps it is because of the influence exerted by Roman culture with the Latin language. As well as romance languages, especially French.
Why is it crazy? Old English was just a different version of Ingvaeonic German, and was pretty close to Old High German that you could understand them about completely. Like the difference between English and Scots. Old English stayed the same until 1200, when the Old French people invaded. Their language was a TINY bit of Frankish (which was a Germanic one) and mostly Latin (which was not Germanic). But, since Germany didn't have much invasions, and Old High German was quickly evolving into Middle High German, the words couldn't be more different!
I mean, only 29% of English words have an Old English cognate. 58% of the words are from Latin, so it is better regarded as a Romance language though in it's core it is Germanic which is why you could probably understand simple sentences in Old English better than late Latin.
Jameez TheRandomGuy i always wondered why it was so easy to read French or Spanish but reading German makes no sense.
Modern English shouldn't even be considered a legit descendant of Old English. It's more like a dumbed down creole language ever since the Norman Conquest.
@Wasoll
It's hard to believe that's true. I'd expect to recognize much more Latin based vocabulary in German, if Latin words were that abundant, as I can in romance languages, but I cannot. As native English speaker, perusing any Romance text I find half the text is cognates immediately. But German may as well be moonspeak.
I‘m from Austria and I understood 50-70% of everything. In our dialect (west of Austria, near the Swiss boarder) we still use words that are quite similar to old English, like Feer for cattle and hus is a house.
So interesting to see all the similarities 😃
Learning Old English, I found having a northern British accent helped a lot. My Gran still used many of the words the panel struggled with
Me (from Northern Germany): Why is he speaking German?
Ich komme aus Bremen 🙈
Thought for a second when I read the thumbnail that it was a German video
@@gravy-jones Yes, we still have a district here in Schleswig-Holstein called "Angeln". ... and there are three Bundesländer with "Sachsen" (Saxony) in their name.
I mean, I'm German too, but I wasn't able to understand everything without the explanation. But then it all made sense. So it's not the same, it's just quite similar. It's much easier if you know some Northern German dialects or Old Frisian language, I guess. Like "buten" is a thing in Low Saxon/Low German. And I did not recognize the similarity of "feoh" and "vieh" , because the spelling is so different and die pronunciation sounded kina weird.
@@ilovebmth2007 ich auch
In modern Dutch it reads:
“Ik heb 26 vee buiten mijn huis” quite literally the same sentence. I understood it right away.
Vieh in German
now you feel how english evoluted a lot.
"ik hebb soss un twintig Veeh buten mien Huus"
in low german how it is spoken in the Elber-Weser region.
The same origin as the old english language and of course Dutch.
@@henner7371 oh wow, that's actually very close to my local Dutch dialect: "ik heb zes en twintig vee buut'n mien huus"
@@CrippleX89 Gronings? :)
For me as a German and Swedish speaker this was super easy! So interesting!
Wow. As a Yorkshireman from England and also a dutch speaker this was soooo easy !! The influences of Old English are very noticable in old Yorkshire dialect
I'm danish. For some reason I understand everything he is saying since I am a fluent English, German and Danish speaker. To me it just sounds like a mixture of those !
Notably, the Old English of this period was heavily influenced by the Normans, who were the recent descendants of Viking settlers. That could be a reason why you understand it easily.
@@CrankCase08 the old english here is from before the norman conquest. Besides, the normans spoke french not norse. It is true however that old english received notable influence from old norse as a result of contact with Norwegian and Danish settlers
@@CrankCase08 You got it mixed up. English is influenced by vikings first, then later, become heavily "Latinized"(definitely wrong wording) by the Normans under William the Bastard, which were French speakers.
@@egz3637 Definitely. And it's interesting that the Vikings also crossed the Atlantic way before "Great Britain" was born. They not only settled in Britain, but also in Iceland.
I find it higlgt interesting, how people, and therefore cultures and languages moved, mixed and progressed into what we can see today.
Would be interesting to see and hear what the world looks like in a hundred or a thousand years.
as german and english speaker (aus deutschland) i can understand most of it too
This is suprisingly close to german. As a german, who doesn't know any dutch, i'd have guessed that language was dutch if I didn't know.
It's incredibly close to Danish, they even say the numbers the same way
@@DarthNihilusKorriban Yo Nihlus i thougth I killed you !
@@Hifi_RoosterMan that's also how you say it in German and Dutch
Dutch alfabet is the exact same as English so no Eszet or a and e in one letter, also there are some, but very few accents on the letters
As a Dutch speaker, I can tell you that its verrrryyy similar to Dutch. Almost identical. For example the Dutch equivalent to the first sentence would be "Ik heb zes en twintig vee buiten mijn huis".
As a Dutch born citizen residing in Germany I can understand everything I'm also raised with dialect and I also speak the dialect here in Germany because it's very Dutch
so you can see that old english is very close to Dutch exactly!
When I stopped trying to hear English, and instead looked for the German, it got a lot easier to understand! Very fascinating :)
Agreed, I’m definitely relying more on my German-speaking portion of my brain than my native English-speaking portion haha
Seems like Old English is much closer to German rather than modern English
Angles and Saxons are Germanic tribes, so they spoke practically the same language
The modern languages would probably be much closer even today if English hadn't been so heavily influenced by Old Norse and Norman French. It's interesting to me in this video that they keep wanting to relate to Romance languages like Spanish. That influence came later, but it's just second nature for us go think of French/Latin as a common source of English words.
Those old connections are the foundation of english actually. We still retain similarities to Old Norse and proto german languages, too!! German is one more language in the long family that our english is indebted to!
Old English can be called Anglo Saxon. There is still a german federation state ,Niedersachsen' and in the state ,Schleswig- Holstein' there is a region still today called Angeln, so the people of the ,Low German Region' are the descendants of those Anglo Saxons which not moved to England. For example the low german word for little is lütt, and the low german word for fork is Forke.
They said that German is the mother of English language. I am just not sure.
German and Dutch People, probably just laughing how you are always thinking into the wrong direction.
Gregor benedikt Manfred Liedtke
How did you mean in the wrong direction?
(Actually easily had all 3 sentences (did need the “remain” info to see the second one). I speak Dutch, German, English and a bit of French and Portuguese, but the Dutch is definitely what made the connection)
@@misterkami2 Lol I had the same experience, even speak the same languages as you.
@@misterkami2 People who neither speak German nor Dutch (nor Frisian nor Scandinavic Languages) aren't qualified enough to understand many words of old English, so they think something else about words which are just easy for us
@@gregorbenediktmanfredliedt2034
Ah.. I thought you meant German and Dutch were the ones thinking in the wrong direction.. what you meant was us laughing about how others think in the wrong direction. Thank you for the clarification.
@@RenzoVV98
Wow, that is cool! It's a quite unusual combination of languages. I would love to learn something completely different such as Japanese.
I assume you are Dutch?
As a Dutch speaker i fully got the first and last one and it blew my freaking mind.
Heya, native West-Frisian speaker here. I understood every sentence 100%!
We Germans clearly excel here at guessing Old English sentences meanings, having great fun to know better than even native English speakers! :D
It’s where the large chunk of Old English comes from, so-
yes, the British have a lot of old German blood in their veins, whether they like it or not 😜
thats because old english is basically still anglosaxon, wich is close to saxon. and well..we have especially in german dialects a lot of old words. even some that were already in germanic in use.
But the #2 was not too easy one!
@Mikê'e Stark Coventry and such likes...
Me as a German: "Meh, this isn't too hard actually"
Me as an English person 'WTF this is literally just German, not English- it makes perfect sense now' lol
I had to think of the old people in the Northern German villages speaking Platt.And also, when I have to deal with Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh at work, thinking Plattdeutsch helps a lot to understand them, after all, the elderly have much stronger local accents.
Me too, learning German.
Vieh, Viecher = beasts, animal. Buten = outside. Ick heev sesontwintig veh /deren buten min hus. So snackt man platt. Das ist altsächsisch. Old saxonian. Like the elder spoke
@@SobrietyandSolace I’m jealous! 🙂
I'm Dutch, and only didn't get the féoh in the 1st sentence. We also say 'zes en twintig' (twenty-six) and 'buiten' (butan - outside). But when Simon explains 'féoh' I immediately recognise the word, because we say 'vee' for cattle in NL.
Language is so cool... and so related... just, wow.
In German: we say "sechsundzwanzig" for 26, "feoh" is similar to german "Vieh" (modern: "Stück Vieh") und "buten" is Low Saxon (Plattdeutsch) "draußen", "außerhalb" - the opposite "binnen" means "innen"/"innerhalb" // (2) "beda" is german "baden"(to bath) and "eure Hände" (your hands) - "belifan", similar danish "bliver", german "bleiben" - "hal" similar to german "heil" ("heil bleiben" - like: to remain in shape), also german "heilen" (to heal) // (3) (ger) "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." - (dan) "Det er sommer. Blomsterne er her." - (lowsax) "blomen".
@@michaelhahn6955 In Dutch very similar as well, it is:
'Zes-en-twintig', feoh is 'vee', inside and outside are 'binnen' en 'buiten'. Blifan is 'blijven'. Flowers are bloemen (pronounced Blumen), Hal is 'heel'. Bade is 'baden', hus is 'huis'. Etc.
"Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier".
I like and hate related languages at the same time.
I like that they are related, but hate that they are languages, because mutual efforts can easily make the speakers of the two languages intelligible to each other.
Germans and Dutch need to work on a middle language, or better yet go back to an older way of speaking (not everywhere obviously, just taught in school) this way they have an easy lingua franca to use when going about, Mittelhochdeutsch was a fine mix tbh between the Lower and Higher dialects.
And this is completely fine and very effective method. All Arab countries speak different languages zum Beispiel, but all teach the same language (old Arabic from 600 A.D) in their schools. so even though they speak Iraqisch or Tunisisch with their families, they quickly switch to Old Arabic when speaking with Arabs from far away.
I am really interested in languages and etymology in specific and I’m really happy to find people on TH-cam just talking about this sort of stuff.
The „wholeness“ theme reoccurring in languages of a completely different families is really amazing
It's like you put German and (modern) English words into a pot, cook it and then season it with some Swedish pronunciation
true lol
Indeed
Knowing how modern English formed, it's more like sticking English in a pot and removing most of the non-germanic influence
Some Swedish? LOL. Yes, it was due to those beastly Vikings coming ashore on English beaches, plundering, feasting and eventually enjoying the humble, helpless English peasant girls.
@@hinchlnt Actually, I read once that those "helpless" English girls actually *preferred* the Viking lads, since they were more invested in practicing personal hygiene, and weren't bad looking on the whole.
My 6 years of struggling through German lessons are paying of. Finally.
lol same
How did you study german for 6 years ? Are you fluent now?
buahahhahahahahh same feeling lmao
Now I see how my german teacher said that English and German have the same roots. Looking at it.. its like German is closer to Old English
@@melaniebeltran2703 English (or its progenitor) is basically a Low German dialect from various areas around the North Sea. To this day Frisian, which is still spoken in the North Sea area of Germany and the Netherlands, is the closest language to English (not considering Scotts here).
I knew feoh because of knowing the Elder Futhark (runes), the very first rune is 'feoh' and sometimes translated as Aurocks (a now-extinct wild bovine).
Also in Modern English, 'hale' means healthy.
Pecus. Cattle pecuniary/money, Latin
i also linked it to fare or whatever, a female horse?
or maybe fohlen? im confused, but i immediately thought of animals
The modern German version of feoh is Vieh.
Yet you can't recall your real adult name!
It was unexpectedly easy for me as a native German speaker to figure out a lot of these sentences.
It's literally a Northern German getting confused when speaking English
Lol
Or in my case, an Australian the speaks really bad German, I have it nailed.
It’s just a mix of dutch, german and a scandinavian language
Basically Dutch or Frisian.
@@rogerwilco2 I live in the east of The Netherlands, and beside standard Dutch, i am also very proficient at local languages, meaning Nedersaksisch, i understood like 85% of this.
so Germans pronouncing ''the'' like ''Se'' is actually kinda the right way
Best comment!!!!!
Muahahaha! Thumbs up!
No, sis is just se correct German accent -:) We use to struggle with the "th"-noise, since we don't have.
@@HesseJamez Exthept when you thuffer from a thpethial pronounthing dithability that affecth your tongue. Then it'th all eathy.
@@NICEFINENEWROBOT Thank you for traveling with the deutsche Bahn!
This is so COOL!!! With the second example I immediately keyed into the 'belifan' meaning remain, because in Dutch it's 'blijven' - but seeing how English speakers parse it as 'believe' makes so much sense. This is fascinating!! (I'm bingewatching this entire show now, haha!)
As an Australian speaker who learned German at school, yes it's very easy to understand. Surprisingly I can understand a lot of written Dutch, and even some Norwegian, although I struggle when it's spoken. But then I taught English to Speakers of other Languages and can pretty much work out a lot from a combination of body language and sounds.
‘australian speaker?’ lmao, australian isn’t a language
@@TheeEnglishKnight In linguistic topics it matters which dialact you speak bro
Could you teach my grandson some Dutch? I would be much obliged.
He is 9 years old, growing up near Melbourne, is regularly in the Netherlands (except for the recent corona years), but is not picking up many Dutch words. Except for calling me "opa' and pronunciating "train' as the Dutch "trein'.
His mother, my daughter, is Dutch, but since many years 'abroad', my son in law is as Australian as can be, including his accent and his old mother still managing an enormous sheep farm.
I had similar experiences. I have native English with a little schoolboy German and always found reading Dutch to be vaguely possible. I then went and learned fluent Swedish, which probably improved my Dutch comprehension even more.
Latin is huge too. Even if you never formally.studied it, just the habit of seeking roots in modern languages will lead you to discover related words in others.
Speaking German certainly helps with this. "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." (don't I wish)
Old English was a germanic language for sure. Also I'm thinking feoh = Vie(c)h (modern German dialect for Tier/animal)
Yeah, same with "Badet eure Hände" (Bathe your hands).
Ja. The first two I had a word or two, but "Hit's Sumer. Se Bloman sindan her."? I laughed when I saw it! :-D
For Fēoh i thought of the rune Fehu, but i thought that meant "Wealth", but it seems it can be "cattle" too
I know English natively, I've been learning Swedish for a year now and it's funny because I'm certain a year ago I wouldn't understand these sentences but it isn't actually that bad now
If you speak English, German and a Scandinavian language, this shit is easy!
Yes, as long as you follow your intuition and don't overthinking it is surprisingly easy! But it would be a pain to properly learn the grammar and vocabulary though :D
Agreed. As a Norwegian that knows english and some german, this makes me think i would manage communicating with an old-english speaking person
I was surprised at how badly they did. I speak just english fluently, with terrible spoken spanish and a bit of German, and the second one in particular was like immediately obvious. Bathe your hands to stay hale (and hearty)
@@chiar0scur0 i would say it is absolutely not "immediately obvious" (and i speak Swedish, English and German) :D
Not ”fēoh”. That sounds exactly like får = sheep.
Its amazing how much context German adds. sindan - sind etc.
I love this!!! I have found several channels which do NOT teach language, but teach the origin of language. Similarly, I found a guy who speaks about the entomology of individual words. This is incredibly cool....thank you!
As a Norwegian speaker with English skills this was actually surprisingly easy. I managed more or less all of them. Fascinating!
I thought that these letters like þ and the other one reminded me of icelandic.
@@kotrynasiskauskaite4995 English retained most of those extra letters until the arrival of the Printing press 😊👍
Same for Danish.
@@kotrynasiskauskaite4995 they have practically just gone and become normal roman letters.
Like
Þessum being related to the word "this"
And also disse in modern danish.
And ð is basically just soft d.
So I guess Icelanders don't just gave to KNOW when a d should be hard soft or silent, since they can read it.
Hehe, yeah, really easy for me (I am danish)!
I speak Swedish, English and German so this was easy to understand, it's like a mix of words from all those languages, really cool
I speak English and German but I got it immediately. I dreamt that sweds could understand my German. Is that possible?
Same its really cool that i kindoff actually understand most of it
@@annekabrimhall1059 It depends a lot of how you pronounce each word and your intonation for how good the one you talk with will be to decode your intention (meaning). Also a lot of Swedish people today haven't even had German as a second language at school, so they are more trained in English then any other language (from passive consumption of media) and that is also more or less the second language after Swedish in every school today. (German or any other language will be the third language they will have opportunity to learn.)
You must feel the same I feel watching the ones with latin languages. In this episode it sounded like nothing i heard before. (I am na portuguese native, bybthe way)
My son studies Latin and Japanese!
For a dutch person knowing english and a bit of latin this is suprisingly easy to read. Only the letters are quite different, but it sounds pretty familiar.
Im a german native speaker and its actually fascinating that old english is so closely related to modern german. We germans count still the same way like in the first example, saying „sechsundzwanig“, which means literally „six and twenty“, instead of twenty six.
The same goes for the third example: „We are“ means in german „Wir sind“. Extremely close to old english. Flowers means Blumen in german too.
If one speaks Low Saxon (Low German) things get even more similar. For example:
Ic hæbbe syx ond twintig fēoh būtan mīn hūs
LS in different spellings/dialects:
Ik hev/hebbe sös-un-twintig vey buten myn huus (Northern Low Saxon/Eastphalian, New Saxon spelling)
Ik heff söss-un-twintig Veeh buten mien Huus (Northern Low Saxon, SASS spelling)
Generally: If you’re German you can nearly understand everything because the words are much more similar than those used in the present with Latin roots.
Because the roots of old English are Germanic. The roots of modern English are still Germanic. It's just that they replaced far too much with words of Latin root.
@@maythesciencebewithyou damn you're telling me that English, a Germanic language, is Germanic? No way
@@flimpeenflarmpoon1353
Does it even still count as a Germanic language if 90% of the original Germanic vocabulary was replaced by Latin, French, and various words from random world languages?
English people was in process to adopt french as official language, but the process was interrupted. So english is a mix of germanic with french.
english is based on old french rather than latin...william the conqueror was a native old french speaker (from Normandy) and imposed old french as the elite language of England but in the long run the English language became a creole of old germanic (mainly frisian) and old french.
Someone over my shoulder asking why I watch something so “boring”. I could only think about how boring they were. I learn so much from these videos about languages and their origins. It’s endlessly fascinating and I feel a tiny bit more intelligent after each one.
Some People are just simpleminded let them be, in most cases they don't change^^
I have so much fun watching this. I play the game along. Love the comments. I really can't see someone saying it boring.
this was so bloody interesting... thank you so much ! got here by accident, happily stayed to watch the whole thing. Very interesting stuff !
A comparison between Old English, Dutch, German and a Scandinavian language would be fascinating
French: I'm gonna end this language's whole lexical similarity.
😈
Damn Normands ruining the English language.
@@jprec5174 start speaking Aglish then.
*snort laughs* Too true.
The Normans just gave us extra words. They didn't take much away. So they give us a word like centre. But we also still have the word middle. We didn't lose it.
As a dutch and German speaker this was actually pretty easy to understand! You should do a video with Dutch/German speakers to see how much they understand
karen thx. me too.
Yeah, I'm a Dutch speaker too and this is quite understandable. But i think that has to do with the fact that old english stems from old frysian.
jeah, me too. I'm German
Ja
@@ju5t_0nl1ne7 Dutch Is rich?
in modern NL the word for outside is "Buiten". So I think we can say its clearly related. in NL we use also "zes en twintig" or officially written "zesentwintig" We turn it also arround, no idea why English suddenly started saying the twenty first. in modern NL we also use the general word "Vee" for animals on the farm. Any way if you take this line to modern Dutch it would be "Ik heb zesentwintig vee buiten mijn huis." Which is rather close written.
Being a native German speaker helped _a lot_ with that last sentence.
Being a native English speaker didn’t help a bit on this one, but the semester of German I took in college and having a few Swedish friends I learned Swedish from helped a lot😂
Same here, I remember that little bit of German I did at school when I was 15 and am sat here the whole time like 'this is just German lol'
@@SobrietyandSolace If you ever need an argument for why it is useful to learn even a little bit of a foreign language (even if you won't speak it later in life), here you have it. :-)
Taking two years of German pretty much helped me understand all of it XD
Same with me and my Danish studies
German: "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." 🙂
In dutch : Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier
@@lydiakeerl6717 In Swedish: "Det är Sommar. Blommorna är här"
@@ikuzoburandeon so crapy swedish langy
Tað er summar. Blómurnar eru her.
Norwegian: "Det er sommer. Blomstene er her"
Bavarian native here.
1. Very very easy to understand. Particularly as "Fiecha" still means any animal or cow in my language.
2. Hard to understand except the "eure Hände".
3. No problem at all. It is basically like all current German languages/dialects.
As a German and English speaker I was able to get most, but not all of this. Very cool video!
"Min hus" is literally current Swiss German.
Because Swiss German or a lot of alemanic German dialects haven't made through the vowel shift, whereas they have made the most complete sound shift (high German).
@@SchmulKrieger rather Mittelhochdeutsch
@@magmalin Mittelhochdeutsch beschreibt eine Zeit, in der eine bestimmte Stufe des Hochdeutschen gesprochen wurde. Es handelt sich aber immer noch um das Hochdeutsche.
@@SchmulKrieger Mittelhochdeutsche Dokumente sind vorallem in Süddeutschland, im Südwesten gefunden worden. Was soll das mit dem vermeintlichen "Hochdeutsch" zu tun haben?
@@magmalin ich nehme an, dass du kein Germanist bist.
"eowre handa" is clearly modern German "eure Hände" =))
icelandic: yðar hendur
murkotron I think it's very close to "our hands" too.
@@pt3085 "your", not "our"
@@pt3085 our hands in old English - ure handa.
Jouw handen = dutch
It's just kind of an old Western/Northern German accent I suppose.
And as an Austrian (which is about the most south german accent there is) I do understand a few things but to me it just sounds like a combination of Lower German, Norwegian, Dutch, maybe a little bit of standard German and English +something really old.
Nice to see Simon popping up here and doing his thing and repping for Old English.
I'm german, I don't understand old german but old english is like modern german to me xD .
Wel English is derived from German .
die King James Bibel geht sogar mit altem Bairisch besser als mit Englisch
Lmao
@@Halicos93 Old English (Anglo Saxon) derived from the same older Germanic language stock as Old German, but Modern English is not a child of Modern German, but a cousin who over centuries intermarried other languages, mostly Norman French, Latin and Greek, and imported words from Dutch and Scandinavian and other Romance languages like Spanish and Italian.
Yes, but it sounds a bit off.
Badet eure Hände zu bleiben heil. Grammar is def. English in this example.
Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier. Grammar is German. Dialects would be even closer. S'is Sommer, de Blume sin her.
Me, as a german-speaking Austrian, nearly understands every sentence.
The one with the flowers is pretty close to how we would say it.
me as German speaking Austrian got 2 of them almost correct. Maybe I use to some older English though.
mik kyo Sie verstehen mehr Englisch als ich haha
I love this so much. I understand so much of this 🤗❤️ I really want to learn this language now.
The 'feoh' is the same as the modern German word 'Vieh' (pronounced: 'fee'), which means cattle.
The modern German word "Viech" (pronounced: 'fee-k') sounds very similar to "feoh", which means "creature/critter".
I feel like if this guy doesn't already know dutch he'd pick it up within a week.
Denk het ook!
Zeker weten
I was thinking similar to Dutch! I started to learn a little bit of Dutch and Celtic on Duolingo, the app, and it sounds similar.
It's strange, the first thing I heard when he started to speak was a South Afrikan accent - which would fit with your Dutch connection.
@@mainstay. Afrikaans!
Me as a Frisian - sounds like my father talking....
Frisian?where are you from?
Kom je uit de provincie Friesland?
@@jhde9067 Friesland. It's a province in the Netherlands with their own language, Frisian. The only province with their own language. The rest of the country speaks Dutch.
@@jhde9067 He is from the Netherlands
@@Murkelsable There are also Friesen in Germany who stil speak it and can communicate with the dutch friesen as afaik.
Being from Germany I almost understood or guessed almost everything.
It's amazing how similar those old languages were...so it's no wonder that people from different countries could understand each other.
Singing a little German song I learned in elementary school in my head "Alle Vogel sind schön da...", sinden is from the same verb. Flowers...birds...same thing as the last sentence.
CAN ITALIAN, PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH SPEAKERS UNDERSTAND LATIN ? 👍 IF YOU WANNA SEE THIS VIDEO
That would be interesting to see as well. It's pretty much the Romance language equivalent of this video.
Sarebbe fantastico
Yes. Classical Latin as well so it's just that more difficult for the Italian speaker hehe.
@@sonicps9056 eh sì
europeans are at an advantage because usually they take latin lessons in school. So maybe PT-Potuguese, Spanish (non latin americans) speakers can understand this language better.
I’ve studied just a little bit of German, but the similarities are very easy to spot.
As a german speaker I immediately understood the third sentence
Another Keyboard Cat me too
If you‘d speak some modern Saxon (Low Saxon / Low German), you‘d understand even more.
E.g. first sentence in Low Saxon:
Ik hev/hebbe sös-un-twintig vey buten myn huus.
@@TheMichaelKjau datt hebb wi us glikks tosoomriemelt.
@@TheMichaelK feoh -> vey -> vieh for german speakers, which is the word for cattle.
I would be happy if you continue this sort of videos with Simon and old English - I enjoyed it very much! Thank you and hello from Ukraine! :)
Also in Italian the word " pecunia" meaning " money" comes directly from the Latin word " pecunia" (livestock), that comes from the latin word " pecus" meaning " sheep" , because in ancient times having cattle or livestock was like having money , and you could pay taxes with them.
"Hale" meaning "healthy" is still used in the expression "hale and hearty".
sozinho1 Is that a common expression where you live? It is not common at all in NW North America.
And the 'sound' in 'safe and sound' is a cognate of German 'gesund' and Dutch 'gezond' (healthy.)
@@JesusFriedChrist I hear it every once in a while here in the South. Mostly from older people
Or in an infamous chant: "Heil!"(ei=ai) At least that is what popped into my mind. In German, things can be hale(heil), aswell as men. Wishing it, consequently means that you do not wish for its dimise. I wonder why some fellow Germans do not point out this similarity...
@@GdotWdot Wow, thanks, I always wondered where that 'sound' came from. Do you think it may also have common roots with the latin 'sana/sano', or it's just a coincidence?
Hit's Sumer. Se blõman sindan hēr.
German: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier.
Det är sommar. Blommorna är här.
Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier.
Her we habban... I do not speak Old English, but as a German native speaker that sounds incorrect to me because in German we would say "Hier haben wir" (verb second order) and not "her we habban" :)
Here is what I understood without reading the subtitles:
Ic habbe syx ond twentig feoh butan min hus. = Ich habe sechsundzwanzig ... mein Haus. (I don´t understand "feoh" and "butan"; but I assume that "feoh" may be a noun and "butan" a preposition).... "butan" could also be a verb... maybe "bauen" (to build)??? (After I saw the solution: "feoh" = "Vieh"... Oh, I could have seen that... but "Vieh" does not have a plural form in German... In German you cannot say "Ich habe 26 Vieh in meinem Haus", only "Tiere")
"Bedat eowra handa to belifan hal."
It is Summer. The Blooms/blosoms are here.
@@H0llaZ1990 Det er sommer. Blomstene er her. I got the last sentence quickly, "bloman" was easy enough and "sindan" sounded so much like "sind" in German. Got all three sentences more or less correctly, in the first one I figured it was sheep (får) or simply livestock in general, and thought of "fe", which is a Norwegian word used for farm animals in general (usually pertains to sheep, cows, and pigs though). "Bufe" is another form, meaning much the same, but used mostly in rural regions and dialects. I don't think my connection with the Swedish "nötkreatur" would have been as useful in this instance! :P
The „Flower Sentence“ is almost german. „Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier“.
It did occur to me that 'bleoh' is cognate with 'liv' (Breton for colour). The v is pronounced as a w... They look different written but sound very similar when spoken
As a native Dutch speaker I understand I have 26 outside my house but didn't know feoh, until you said cattle I was like: oh, Vee
it literally sounded like 4 but in a french accent lol
Appeltje eitje dit!
SAME
I thought deer for some reason, like my brain turned it into the word “fallow” which incidentally were also used as money hence the American Bucks
Exactly the same happened for me as a native German speaker. (German for feoh/cattle/vee is Vieh or colloquially Viech). I think my problem was the spelling difference, which was just big enough for my knowledge of English to get in the way. (English getting in the way is incidentally also what happened when I learned Dutch using Duolingo. It actually made Dutch word order kind of difficult for me, because I had to consciously remember the weird German word order in order to get the identical Dutch one.)
Some of it sounds very similar to Dutch making it not so hard to understand at least when reading
butan en buiten, bloman en bloemen, belifan en blijven.
indeed can be easily read as 'Ik heb vijf-en-twintig vee buiten mijn huis'
Zeker bij de laatste
I'm a Frenchwoman who can speak English, some German, and useless smatterings of a dozen other languages, including Latin, middle English and middle French. In the Netherlands? No need for a dictionary! When you want to be understood in return though...
@@coffic Well the Netherlands is the best English speaking country worldwide, besides countries with English as their native language, so you should be fine being understood in the Netherlands while speaking English
Even it was propably stated here before a few hundred times:
In german it's called Vieh (Cattle) and numbers as "sechsundzwanig" (six and twenty) until today.
I love this! I will be watching more here!
Im a Frisian so i actually understood about 90% of this! I love how frisian and english are so similar. for instance cheese is tsiis, roof is rûf, door is doar (all pronounced basically the same and mean the same thing)
If anything, the spelling for the words you used as an example makes more sense than the english one!
I heard Frisian is now declining as a language because some prefer talking Dutch, and I saw a comment from another Frisian speaking saying he didn't speak Frisian stating it's not suitable when talking to God or the rest of his neighbors
Don't let it fall out of use and continue use it as much as possible a it is the closest related language to modern English
@@javicruz9754 Sadly enough, it's true. In most small villages people still speak Frisian, and also in church, so I don't see why it would be difficult to talk to God in Frisian. Not a lot of elementary schools teach it anymore either. I hope we can keep speaking it for a long long time here!!
I just found out Old English had it's roots from a variety of languages including old Frisan hence the similarities seen today. I missed most of the sentences as a native English speaker 🤣
@@MrRcn23 When I was in school I learned that "Good butter and good cheese are good English and good Fries".
So is Feoh like "Vieh" in German maybe?
Modern English: cattle
Yeah it's like Vieh or Viech but that butan threw me off.
@@WeinyXD "Butan" kennt man aus dem Niederdeutschen: "Buten un binnen wagen un winnen" ist der Wahlspruch Bremens: "Draußen und drinnen wagen und gewinnen".
Yes, I believe it is. Feoh is a funny one in English. It was lost from Old English and then reborrowed back into English, becoming Fee (money) via Norman-French, which of course was a Romance language but with a sizeable Germanic chunk of words.
Yes!
When he translated, I realized that hal is the same as hale, as in "hale and hearty." Then it struck me, of course hal means healthy.
Fascinating! Thank you.
Can a modern German speaker understand old English? Sounds like a video to make
Good idea! How about lumping in other Germanic languages such as Dutch, Frisian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish?
As a native German speaker I can understand 80% and make some educated guesses for the rest 😅
The third example in this video is the most easily understood of all of them I think. If you speak modern Dutch or German, it maps very well onto either. Just compare:
"Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier." and "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." for Dutch and German respectively.
The other two in this video and the three in the first part were pretty intelligible in parts, but required some guesswork and/or knowledge of etymology to fill in the gaps.
Closer to Dutch.
Should try to get a Frisian to understand it.
As an American who has learned German, this was very interesting and not actually too difficult! If you just average the German and English in your brain you can usually come up with something that has the right idea, if not exactly the correct particulars.
Agreed. I've only been studying German for 4 months now (and studying it very casually), it's easier to guess these.
Same here! It was pretty cool. It also shows just how different Old English is from Modern and even Middle English.
yeah im a native english and german speaker and i was actually surprised at how well i could understand it! i read the thumbnail and it didn't even click to me that it was old english at first
I made the mistake to try to think in Danish/English Mixture. Should have gone for German yeah :)
@bademeister I think the word your looking for to describe the relation between low and high german is called 'Idiom'
Third sentence was very obvious knowing English, German and Swedish. No hesitation. I’m surprises the German speakers didn’t pick up the word sindan as in sein/sind.
In Swedish, flowering is “blommar”.
For me, it sometimes was very easy as I am German and spent a long time in the UK. So I made a lot of good guesses. Thank you for this game....
"Se blōman sindan hēr" in German: Die Blumen sind hier
Yes, I got that one right! XD
Even in English it's not so different if you use 'blooms' or 'blossoms' instead of 'flowers'. It would sound uncommon, but not incorrect.
Yeh. German speakers had simple task to get it!
In Danish 'flower' is 'blomst' which is close too. I had that one right away.
@@miroslawczajka3577 actualllyyyy I didnt think of Blumen but of "Blödmann" which is actually an insult so I was super confused hahaha
I speak Dutch/Flemish/German and I could read and understand everything. Some words are very similar or the same and they're still used in many dialects today in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany
Because saxons originate from germany lol.
English & Spanish speaker here, but with friends in Flanders. In the first sentence I got "bῡten" straight away, as "binnen, buiten, boven, & beneden" (inside, outside, upstairs, & downstairs) were concepts drilled into me when hearing my friend telling her young child where his shoes, toys, or football was ... or that it was time to go to bed, upstairs.
"fēoh" (cattle, "vee" in Dutch) however I confused with "foot" ... as in the pre-metric measure ("voet" in Dutch, at least as a body part)), and therefore read it as "my house is 26 ft long", since it's more practical to measure the outside dimension.
Also, having a backyard full of cows isn't a concept that leapt out at me :)
@Brand Bioc-har and Frisian, which is the mother of every germanic languages
@@IAmFat1968 interessant, is that echt, oud-fries dan of anglo-fries?
Sounds very much like my brilliant German friend trying to explain things in English. 😂 I always said he was speaking Deutchglish. 🥰 thank you for making this...I love it!
All modern germanic languages hold a strong resemblance to this! Impressive!
As native German speaker I had no problem recognizing the meaning of every sentence. It is so similar.
As a Dutch speaker, I could outright read the sentence:
"ic haebbe syx-ond-twentig feoh butan min hus"
"ik heb zes-en-twintig vee buiten mijn huis"
Some vowels get thrown about a bit. From haebbe to heb might look a bit of a jump, but the infinitive of "to have" in Dutch is "hebben".
In dutch east dialect (formally nether-saxionian) it would be "ik heb zes en twingtig vee buut'n mien huus"
How do you count in Dutch; like in German & Danish, or like the other Germanic languages?
@@AneGaarden een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes zeven. acht, negen, tien. elf, twaalf, dertien viertien etc
then twintig, eenentwintig, tweeëntwintig, drieëntwintig etc
Then the same rules until 80, when a 'T' is added to the beginning of acht for some reason: Tachtig, eenentachtig, tweeëntachtig etc.
My favourite sentence in Dutch is 'Achtentachtig prachtige grachten' (88 wonderful canals). It's how I mastered the 'g'/'ch' sound when I learned Dutch.
The sentence in German: Ich habe sechs-und-zwanzig vieher außerhalb meines hauses
ik heb hetzelfde geschreven
I gave these sentences to my mother who is from the north west of Germany and doesn´t speak a word of English. She got the first and third sentence right without even thinking about it, altough she thought it was female deer instead of cattle in the first sentence. The second sentence was a bit harder. She understood "do something to your hands to live healthy".
Wow! That's so awesome! Say hello to your mum! :)
Diese Frauen 🤔 können sowieso schon (fast) alles 😄
it is actually crazy how one it is being explained it makes sense ( i speak Polish, German and English) so as one of the people said - it makes perfect sense once you said it
I am german. I did not know what feoh meant, but the explanation was interesting. And after trying a bit, I realised, it is like Vieh in german (which is another word for cattle). The second sentence made sense after the explanation 🙂
The third sentence was no problem. In german that would be: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier.
The American guy actually hit the nail on the head when he said that he always thought that the Southern US accent sounded closer to that of the original British settlers. Linguists have been aware for many years that a minor vowel shift occurred in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. Most of the British colonists in America arrived there before this happened and so took their pre shift accent and pronunciation with them. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were colonised by British settlers after the shift happened so their modern accents reflect this. That is why the American accent sounds so different to those of everywhere else. Weird (the circumstances, not the accent)..
This is so interesting! Thanks for sharing in a nutshell :)
Mad Geordie: however, despite the late timing NZ seems to have received a different demographic (More Scotts??) to Aust, hence they have avoided suffering the great vowel switch which all Australians betray themselves with. Apparently. (I am Australian - we mock NZ'ers E and I, though historically we are probably more incorrect (If that is any way to look at language)
@@kadmow The majority of the early settlers of New Zealand were English but there was a large number of Scots and Irish and their accents and intonation have influenced how English is spoken in New Zealand to this day. As you say the Lesser Vowel Shift at the end of the eighteenth century did not reach Scotland or Ireland so they continued with the older type of pronunciation which is reflected in the modern New Zealand accent.
Well, there is a type of Southern accent which is not rhotic.
@@williamjordan5554 .....and that is?
The third one was the easiest for German speakers: "Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier." Pretty sure it's very close in Dutch, too.
It was indeed very close to Dutch too
I've been finding all of these closer to Dutch than German.
I'm Dutch and a (German) friend of mine, who studied old German, said that in his experience Dutch is more like old German than new German is.
So it makes sense I guess.
I'd be fascinated how this works with Frisian, as it's the closest extant language to English.
I believe the Dutch for "I resign" (as in chess) is something like "Ik gif het opp" (I give it up). There are a lot of similarities between the two languages. On the first occasion I went to Holland, I was embarrassed at not knowing any Dutch at all (I was used to working in France, Germany and Spain, where I knew the languages well). However, I don't think I met a single Dutch person who couldn't speak English. I remember a porter at Schiphol Airport who gave me directions to the hire car area with his "just a little" English. I expressed my admiration for his facility with my native language, and he just shrugged and said, "Who speaks Dutch?"
As a native swedish person that picked up some dutch during my younger years and fluent in english ofc. I was suprised of you well i could understand it.
@@ikendusnietjij2 I like to call Dutch the middle sibling because it end up between the extremes of its siblings, so it sounds a lot like both while being neither.
As Dutchman, also knowing German, I understood the third sentence immediately. Indeed: "bloemen" or German "Blumen" is flowers. "Die Blumen sind hier" in German or "De bloemen zijn hier" in Dutch.
This was really interesting as a german. Didn't get all of it but I definitely could have helped out here and there! The flower sentence in germn btw is: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier. So the "sindan" was actually kind of guessable for a german (even though I didn't get it)
Getting thrown back in time and having to figure out the language in order to survive would be a fascinating movie premise.
I love this. Starts like a sci-fi and turns into just two hours of complete failure to communicate and nothing gets accomplished.
This was a plot point in Timeline, based on the book by Michael Crichton
@@21stcenturykelt Well, now I know what to add to the top of my to-be-read pile. Thanks!
@@FebbieG Anything by Crichton is good. Jurassic Park of course.
The last sentence would be: Es ist Sommer. Die Blumen sind hier. In german and that sounds pretty much the same
Yeah this one was easy. Didn’t get the other two.
yeah same in Dutch. Het is zomer. De bloemen zijn hier.
@@bartmol05 The Dutch is actually closer than German because of the "het". Such a small difference.
@@bartmol05 You're partly right. I got thrown off the course with the second sentence in that snippet because I also speak Dutch. "Se" looks and sounds an awful lot like the Dutch third person plural pronoun "ze". So I thought it would be "Ze bloemen sinds" meaning "They are blooming since". And "her" could be meaning yesterday, as it's close to "eer" which in Dutch means "before than". Me speaking also French might have influenced me too. "Hier" is yesterday in French.
@@luc4662 I totaly saw the second one but only after the fact - "Es fiel mir wie Schuppen von den Augen" - The first one really was an issue because of butan (I thought it meant »under« too) and feoh
I got the hand washing one, or very close. I said “wash your hands to retain/keep health”