Ha, I knew you were going to post that video by Alexander Arguelles.

I like Frisian, it sounds nice, but my usage of it is restricted to shouting "Twa Skiep!" whenever I see a pair of sheep in Minecraft.


Personally I find Afrikaans easier to understand than Frisian, though the way the mouth has to form around the words makes my tongue tired. After speaking it for a while it takes a while for my mouth to go back to the shape where I can speak English normally.

The Normans were originally Norse, so if only they had kept their own language when they were given land in Gaul... Damn Romans.

The German in northern Germany (Plattdeutsch) also sounds more like English than standard German does. The southern Germanic dialects went through a couple of consonsant shifts in the early centuries A.D. that distinguish them from northern Germanic. In some words, p shifted to f, d shifted to t and so on. ship- Schiff, apple-Apfel, brother-Bruder, flat- platt, thing- Ding

Anglo-Saxon in its day was a prestige language, so we kept words like king from them. But then Norman became the prestige language, so English's Germanic roots are heard in earthy, homey kinds of subjects. House, home, hearth, wife, brother, sister, and so on. Farm animals tend to be the Germanic words, but the meat from them became the Norman. cow- beef, swine- pork etc.

Very interesting stuff. I didn't know about this before. I'll have to ask a German classmate if she knows of it, she's excellent with languages, she's fluent in 3 or 4.

I'm pretty sure the Norse didn't settle in Normandy until well after Rome fell.

Never knew that about Frisian. Only knew about the 'Frisian Axe.'

Skiep is actually singular. The plural is skiepen

Edit: Apparently I'm wrong. A friend of mine just corrected me. Shows what I know

I can yell "two sheep!" in Frisian now! Alright!


Afrikaners sound like they're trying to hack up a phlegm ball when they speak.

It was still the Romans that romanized Gaul, however, turning the local Celtic and Germanic languages into a romance dialect.

That's the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative, the sound scarcely exists in modern English. I don't have any trouble pronouncing that, it's the vowels and rolling r's that are different from how I speak English.

Rather terrifying Afrikaans music video I found while trying to find a "phlegm-ball" speech example. Apparently some comedic personality there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQVa3isBt8Y

He's got that "haachhhh" sound going on though. At least with Frisian you don't have to worry about making that noise.

Interesting....... I thought American was the closest to English.

One set of great grandparents came to Michigan from Friesland, speaking both Dutch and Frisian. My grandfather was born here and was tri-lingual (added English). Unfortunately, he died before I really had a chance to learn either language.

I went to high school with a girl originally from Holland, Michigan. She said the area really does have a lot of people of Dutch descent.

I was born in Holland. With local place names like Holland, Zeeland, Borculo, Noordeloos, Vriesland, Overisel, and Drenthe, you could say we have a bit of Dutch history in this area (Holland was settled by a Dutch preacher in 1846).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17107435 Makes me ashamed I never got beyond elementary Spanish. I really need to find a language and concentrate on learning it.

I wish I was like that. I was always terrible with new languages though. French and German were among my worst subjects
Personally, I've always wanted to learn Russian.

Though I suppose being fluent in three languages isn't bad all things considered

Still has little to do with the Normans.

I know the feeling. Both of my parents speak Spanish perfectly, yet I don't speak it fluently. Very embarassing. :/

Afrikaans sounds cool, I wonder if there's an interview of Charlize Theron using that language on YouTube.