In the example below, you can see how the definite article changes to mark gender in German but not in Dutch or English. The masculine and feminine categories have all but coalesced into a single group and case is no longer marked except for personal pronouns. Over time, however, it has lost most of these distinctions. Historically, this language was much closer to German, having three distinct genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and a complex declension system. When it comes to gender distinctions, Modern Dutch is much simpler than German or even English, as it groups all nouns under a common or neuter category. Whereas Dutch, just like English would have the same words ( wereld, bescherming, weerstand) written in lower case unless they appear at the beginning of a line or sentence. Such is the case of Welt (world) Schutz (protection), and Trutze (resistance) in the verse above. And in case you’re wondering why so many words are capitalized, that’s because German capitalizes not only countries, nationalities, and days of the week, but any noun that appears in any part of the sentence.

They belong to the first verse of Germany’s National Anthem. This means that the Dutch word gek (crazy), for example, should never be pronounced with the plosive sound that you would use to say go in English, but with a hardened “h” sound, similar to the Spanish “j”. In Dutch, however, it’s pronounced with a guttural sound like the German pronunciation of ch- in Ich. German G is a plosive sound pronounced at the back of the mouth, which you can also find in English in words like gate and goat. Dutch vs German: The Main Differences The pronunciation of G That is why, today, we will focus on the differences between Dutch vs German.

Over time, these two peoples grew apart, and so did their languages. There was no strict distinction between German and Dutch. And though there are many unique aspects that set Dutch apart from these two languages, both English and German speakers should be able to guess what is being discussed even if they understand every single word.Ī few centuries ago, everyone in both the Low Countries and Germany spoke different local dialects which formed a fluid continuum. From a linguistic perspective, Dutch is halfway between an earlier form of English and German. As it turns out, Dutch, the language spoken in this country, is just as fascinating as the people who speak it.

Low german words in english