Hi from the Netherlands! I was wondering how much Danish and Frisian are alike. Frisian is a seperate language spoken in the north east of the Netherlands (and a small part in Germany, and apparently also a small part on the Danish-German border).

During my travels last year I met a Danish guy, and I was surprised to how much Dutch and Danish sound alike, but are still incomprehensible when spoken. (Written is easier than I thought actually).

Anyway, it sounded a bit like Frisian to me. Which makes sense because they’re closer to you than I am. I was wondering if there’s a lot of similarities.

Oh, here’s a Frisian news segment as an example: https://youtu.be/SsmSgemP8TY

35 comments

  1. They are very close… Can’t say specifically for Frisian, but as a seafare, I have called at Rotterdam a lot. Also the first half of the river for Antwerp is with Dutch pilot….

    Whit my Danish, English and limited school German, I do understand quite a bit of what they are saying

  2. I can’t find any clip, but there was once (15 – 20 years ago) a Dutch professor in Danish who went on Danish TV and spoke perfect Danish, with no discernable foreign accent.

    The fact that he could speak perfect Danish wasn’t remarkable; but the fact that he spoke it without any discernable accent was virtually unheard of, given how incredibly hard Danish is to pronounce properly for anyone who hasn’t been raised with it as a native language.

    I don’t know whether he spoke Frisian natively, but perhaps that could help explain how he was able to completely and utterly pronounce the words like a native Dane.

  4. Durch, Frisian and the dialect in southern Jutland are all derived from middel-nieder-deutsch

    They are more alike than people realise 🙂

  5. I had a very similar experience. I was sharing a dormitory kitchen and a whole family was visiting, talking to each other. I couldn’t understand anything, but for a long while I thought it was Danish and I was simply having some kind of momentary brain fault.

    The intonation, speed, syllables, (lack of) melody, sounds were identical. I had the weirdest feeling of being sure i should understand, but i had somehow lost my ability to understand speech.

  6. I have not heard about Frisian and I did not find anything in that video besides some gibberish language.

    Did they use Frisian or was it all dutch?

  7. I don’t understand anything they’re saying in that clip. But it very much sounds like someone from my home region is saying gibberish on purpose. As if we share the same dialekt or accent, we just have different words

  8. Learning Danish as a German-speaker was a great experience. I had a mate from the czech republic, and every time we learned a new word I would turn to him and tease him how much easier it was for me, since the words are so similar.

    “Stephan, do you know what ærlig means in German? It means ehrlich!”

    “Fuck off, Hans.”

  9. There are some similarities, certainly more than Flemish and regular Dutch.

    Most Danes should be able to read a Dutch news article with a bit of difficulty, i suspect written Frisian would be a little easier just from the sound of it.

  11. If you speak danish, english and german you pretty much understand the dutch language.
    I understand approximately 60% of all spoken dutch.

  13. Was s ski instructor in the same area as a bunch of Dutch, the Danes could sometimes hash out what the Dutch where saying when speaking to one another, it never worked the other way around.

  14. They are similar. I’m dutch, my grandfather was frisian and I grew up close to Friesland. I don’t speak the language, but understand it reasonably well (I grew up with another regional language/dialect), and I’ve learned danish since I live here now. There are similar words, but also the pronunciation and tone is very similar in my opinion.

  15. Both Dutch and Frisian are very similar to danish in pronunciation. It’s a wild trip bring in the Netherlands and constantly feeling like you’re having a stroke because you recognise the way people speak as danish, but you don’t understand anything they are saying.

  16. My partner is frisian and had a “what the heck” moment when he heard the jylland accent when we watched some clips of it, he said it sounds like frisian but with the wrong words and I thought that was funny. Languages are awesome 🙂

  17. That clip is funny! It sounds almost like someone has made up fake words but saying them in Danish.

    Didn’t understand very much, I can recognize words with my knowledge of German, Danish, and English, but I think if it was written I could probably get it.

    Interesting.

  18. I went to a party in Aurich which is very close to The Netherlands border. And they spoke German with several Frisian words. I’m married to a person from Sønderjylland (Southern Jutland) and a lot of the border dialect’s words are similar to Frisian or what, I believe some Danes call plattysk.

  19. They used to say that the fishermen on the North Sea coast could understand each other wether they were from West Jutland, north Germany, the Netherlands or Scotland.

  20. Some of the North Frisian dialects (there are many, and basically none are mutually intelligible) can definitely make me confused as to what I’m listening to. They have a lot of the same words as you find in platt danish and platt german dialects, and the intonation is also quite similar.

    If I’m being honest, west frisian sounds a lot like dutch to me, maybe a little more english-ified. It sounds vaguely familiar like dutch, and I presume I could learn the language really quickly since the sounds are so similar, but i don’t really understand much of anything.

  21. I speak both Dutch and Danish at a fairly high level and I can also understand Sønderjysk pretty much without issue, and I can understand what they’re saying in this clip but it’s a real struggle.

    It sounds FAR more Dutch to me than Danish. But that’s just me.

  24. I have seen written Frisian a handful of times (all of them from south of the German border), but I have never heard it before seeing that clip you linked. I got a few words, but nothing coherent. I can get the general gist of written Dutch and Frisian, as they’re so close to Danish and German, and it’s easier to see the connections when spelled out rather than trying to make sense of the pronunciation

  25. As a native Dane, who knows Dutch after living there for ~8 years – i still don’t understand much of anything of Frisian (or Zeeuws for that matter).
    Dutch in general is close enough to Danish to be understood at least in writing – and visa-versa. But spoken? not by a long shot 😛

  26. IMO the spoken language in that clip doesn’t sound too far from Danish, but there’s still more Dutch in it.

  27. Never heard of it before. Sounds like a Southern Jutland dialect, but I can’t really understand it.

    Afrikaans seems closer to Danish than Dutch and Frisian tbh

  29. I once had a midnight commute by car from Groningen to Denmark over Bremen..
    It where a summer holiday night with no traffic the whole way, so i just relaxed and sat back and listened to the local talk radio stations the whole way..
    That actually where a real funny experience. I literally had no problem understanding the context, the whole way from friesisch to plattdeutsch to finally sønderjysk.. one fluent transition..

  30. I am sorry I am late to this question but I have actually lived in Friesland for about half a year. I lived in the northeast of Friesland where frisian was used more than Dutch.

    When I was out in public I would sometimes think that people would be speaking southern jutland dialect of danish. There is not a lot of difference in sounds between frisian and this dialect. But it is not mutually intelligible at all.

    The only reason I am able to understand some frisian is because it is in my opinion closer to Dutch than Danish.

    So basically the sounds used are similar, but the words are not very similar.

  34. In Denmark, we call it Flamsk, to a danish speaker with danish, german, and english in my vocabulary. It is actually easy to understand. You guys just have to talk a bit slowly, then it’s actually very similar, but you have to have roots in germanic languages 😅

  35. In Denmark, we call it Flamsk, to a danish speaker with danish, german, and english in my vocabulary. It is actually easy to understand. You guys just have to talk a bit slowly, then it’s actually very similar, but you have to have roots in germanic languages 😅

Leave a Reply