What's your favorite Germanic language?

What is your favorite Germanic language?


  • Total voters
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I'm not familiar enough with the Scandinavian languages to be able to make a sound decision. I know English obviously and little bit of German. If I were to compare the two I'd go with German in the context of it being more pure Germanic than English. But I bet the extinct Gothic languages would be my favorite I think they were probably the most similar to Slavic.
 
Danish, for some reason it always was the best sounding one to me.
 
By Order: Hochdeutsch, Plattdeutsch, Nederlands & Svenska.

High German, Low German, Dutch & Swedish.
 
Danish, for some reason it always was the best sounding one to me.

Not wishing to cause offence to anyone, but if there is one Germanic language I have trouble distinguishing by ear, it is Danish.

I can recall catching a train through mainland Denmark, years ago, and at each stop, I'd look at the name of the town, and then listen to the name of the town uttered over the loudspeaker, and I was never able to match the spelling with the pronunciation.
 
Not wishing to cause offence to anyone, but if there is one Germanic language I have trouble distinguishing by ear, it is Danish.
I can recall catching a train through mainland Denmark, years ago, and at each stop, I'd look at the name of the town, and then listen to the name of the town uttered over the loudspeaker, and I was never able to match the spelling with the pronunciation.
That's normal. Unlike Norwegian and Swedish, written Danish is quite different from spoken Danish. Many final letters are dropped like in French, and other groups of letters get merged into another sound (like the -ight in light and night in English). Additionally, Danish is the European language with the highest number of vowel sounds. So it can be difficult to hear words for an untrained ear.
 
That's normal. Unlike Norwegian and Swedish, written Danish is quite different from spoken Danish. Many final letters are dropped like in French, and other groups of letters get merged into another sound (like the -ight in light and night in English). Additionally, Danish is the European language with the highest number of vowel sounds. So it can be difficult to hear words for an untrained ear.

That makes sense, and I guess the glottal stop doesn't help matters.
 
Folk likingmost English most likely should also like its near sibling Scots, right?

late answer - there is not ONE Scot but Scots dialects - the more conservative seem the Northeast ones (East-Grampians/Aberdeen): they are far enough /'enochh'/ from English -
- /'ow' diphtongs kept monophtongs /oo/ or IPA /u:/ except when in English 'ow' is an old '-og' (-ogh)
ex: 'town' = 'toon' - 'about' = 'aboot', 'house' = 'hoose' ...
- guttural stops conserved:
'enough' = /enokh/ , IPA /X/ sound like also in 'night' = 'nicht' /nikht/ - 'low' = 'laich' /le(i)kh/ see dutch 'laag' -
- conservation of old 'ee' as in dutch (german 'ei' /aj/ often) - no -> 'o' /ëu/ evolution as in English:
more' = 'mair' - 'one' = 'ane', 'een' - 'stone' = 'stane' /ste:n/
- anglish 'oo' tends towards german /ö/ or /ü/
'moon' = /mö:n/ - 'good' = ~/göd/ - 'moor' = 'muir' /¨mö:r//mü:r/

all that roughly said; my aim is to say typical scot is not so "soft" as english, and more all-germanic like"; except english has often very aspirated stops for T, P, K
- thrilled 'r', not the english one -

the Lallands scots are more on the way of a regional english than true conservative dialect
 
Hej,
I voted for the faroese, I can't speak it but to me it just sounds very good. Prolly also way less influenced by other languages than others. Not because I "magically" "travelled" there yesterday (changed my flag for faroe islands) :p

As for danish, it's the scandinavian language I know the better (I'm far from being able to speak, though), just because I lived some months in denmark. I think it's the scandinavian language which sounds the worse, though I still like it.
It's indeed very hard to catch, not straightforward like norwegian is (both languages being very similar).
 
GOTHIC FOREVER! Sadly, it was probably the Goths that caused the population bottleneck of my R1a-M458 haplogroup in ancient Poland. But Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, as I always say.
 
Being biased, I have to say English. A Yorkshire accent is the best accent, and even better if it's truly dialectal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3ieNhEsDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScELaXMCVis

I'm not sure why German gets such a bad name, I think it's quite beautiful to listen to. Perhaps it's because they're less bothered about telling everyone else how wonderful their language is (something that in my experience seems to be a peculiarly-Romance trait)? Dutch is hideous though. I also like Icelandic, and Danish can be pleasant enough to listen to. Swedish and Norwegian have an unusual intonation that I find off-putting.
 
I vote for Luxembourgish.
I found this information online:

"Highland" German), out of which developed Standard German, Yiddish and Luxembourgish. It refers to the Central Uplands (Mittelgebirge) and Alpine areas of central and southern Germany; it also includes Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein and most of Switzerland.

So, it is considered as high german. You learn new things everyday, ha-ha.
 
I voted Icelandic. The grammar feels organised and logical to me, although there are many exceptions. Initially, I thought it would be the granddaddy of Nordic languages, and that learning Icelandic would help with Danish/Norwegian/Swedish but it seems very remote, although some words seem to overlap. I have sort of given up on learning Icelandic at the moment, it's like banging your head against a brick wall. Instead, I am learning Norwegian now and it's a joy, it's so much easier and I can see progress in terms of grammar and vocabulary. By the way, I remember my Dutch teacher in high school saying that Danish was a doddle when you knew Dutch - maybe he had a point.
 
Just returning to this (been on holiday!), I too have old Dutch texts which differentiate between both sounds: one being voiced and the other being unvoiced - and I can recall being confused by this because they both sounded the same to my ear, and my Dutch friends later confirming that as far as they were concerned, it was the same sound - so somewhere along the line, if they were two different sounds, they have come together.



To be honest, being familiar with the sound myself, I can't for the life of me imagine how you can possibly make a voiced version of the sound.

It was maybe more a question of articular energy than one of to be voiced or not, I think.
 
English! it's the only one I know well, besides some words of German lol
 

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