Do understand em as well as Norwegian.

@@iLovettGolf same!

As someone who speaks both English and German as a foreign language, I could also understand both of them 90%. It is till beyond me, how Germans are so struggling with English, like it is science... basically almost the same language XD Try to learn them all as a person who is coming from a totally different language family.

me too, although the strong modern accent of the english guy does make some words sound a bit off ....and Hilbert has a quite noticeable modern dutch accent when he pronounces frisian words.....at least it has a different vibe than the north-frisian of my area, which sounds more like a weird mix of german and old norse.....

@@ingi2785 tbh I think most Germand struggle more with the pronounciation and conversation speed than with the actual language. I mean, I grew up as a German and after school I spent two years in Scotland, which really helped to get rid of that "school English"

Naturally, as the anglo-saxons came from Germany and Jutland not the Nederlands.

😮

@@gunarsmiezis9321 it is important to note that while people did move, genetic evidence shows the majority of genes in the British isles are Celtic. But, just that there are blue jeans everywhere and they teach English in the schools doesn’t necessarily imply a mass migration of Americans into Central Europe. Culture migrates much more than people.

I've seen videos on this in the past and my impression was that the language people in East Frisia speak sounds a lot like Gronings, which I believe is Nedersaksisch (or lower saxon in English).

@@Brand131 Groningen and East Frisia are not only geographically close to each other. Historically speaking, they are one blood and one culture. But Frisian identity was shattered into many pieces throughout history. It is about time to reunite. Look up ""Groep fan Auwerk", if you want to learn more. „Lever dood as Slav“, my friend. :3

Yeah man unless you step off your front porch you won't go anywhere

Exactly! Being humble and patient goes a long way when learning and using a foreign language.

@@NathanHedglin Now I just need to be humble and patient as a learning pharmacist assistant working at a Chemist Warehouse store. It can be frustrating to make mistakes on the job, but I guess how else can I learn? And my ego can get bruised when I can't answer the simplest of customer enquiries, even though a long time ago, I had certain qualifications, but today, none of them really mean much anymore.

He who dares wins, Roders.

@@jimcy1319 Nice! As a quick update which nobody asked for, turns out, I'm starting to succeed as a Pharmacy Assistant at the local Chemist Warehouse. I guess it all started to pay off, even though at the start, I guess, I never saw it coming, or even imagined it possible. Just comes to show, you just have to make a start, not worrying excessively about the results, and the results will come knocking in good time, unbidden.

Indeed... and a fluid old English speaker would have likely understood or at least been able to make an educated guess as to what word was not understood. Moreover in the instance of not understanding understand, an old English speaker would likely recognize the Frisian construction of "ferstean" - "forstan[d]" - more readily than a Frisian would recognize its old English counterpart and probably have a chuckle at the Frisian's reply of not understanding the word understand. But here I don't think Eddie caught on to what word was not understood and that seems to have been the case throughout the rest of their conversation.

@@lahsilaz6880 Rough Translation (from learning some German): I will do that! I can [speak?] enough English, ??? to speak some Frisian from? English.

That is a very good point. Native speakers of related languages can play a sort of synonym minesweeper to make themselves understood. I think they would be also more attune to sound changes and figure out ways of converting sounds. I got the impression that Eddie Izzard wouldn't have been able to analyse the Old English he was speaking. Understand and ferstaen have the same stem, only the prefix is different. I reckon a native speaker would have figured than out fairly soon.

@@alinaqirizvi1441 I would guess "cann" is "know" (from "kennen") instead of "can".

That is actually a very good tip to anyone trying to speak a different language. If you don't know a word, but can describe what you mean well enough, the other person will understand. That is obviously not speaking fluently, but language is for communication, and if you can communicate without being fluent, you're already halfay there.

And most Frisians know English as well.

@@qwertyuiopzxcfgh Maybe not an elderly farmer in the 1980s-1990s (whenever this was recorded) but yes

It's not a real expriment. Perhaps this old farmer in the 80's or 90's didn't understand Dutch.

Oh very good ;) Also a medieval folk etymology for the name Frisia actually!

Should it not be "What did the french man say to the Dutchman outside his house? ‘Come inside, it’s Frisian out there

@@jeddaniels2283 Yep, I think it should. I forgot what dutchmen are called I guess.

Why would the Frenchman speak in the English language.

@@historywithhilbert146 once upon a time my mom took me to a farm where they had newborn pigs. My mom asks me what they were going to do with them. "We're sending them to friesland", "oh nice", "no ma'am, diep-Friesland"

What we know as "English" today, is an Amalgam of many other languages. Some parts of it are French (or Frankish, if you like), other parts are Scandinavian ("old Norse", from the Vikings) and all of that was put on top of the Germanic language of Frisian. Blend all of this together for a few centuries and voila: English!

@@Empyronaut well it’s got Latin parts but nearly all everyday words are of Germanic origin.

@@Empyronaut That's not how English works, nor is there any need to say "English" and denigrate it. English without quotation marks is just a germanic language with yes a lot of loans, whoopty doo, not some mishmash. Specifically one that is closely related to languages like Frisian

@@Empyronaut Bud, what you said there is a common linguistic misconception, English is not a mismatch of languages, it's its own branch of West Germanic language which is heavily influenced, i swear if i see this "mixed language" one more time, i'll sh*t myself to death.

Not sure Yola really deserves to be here with the rest of them given its long dead lmao.

Funny how it works isn't it! This one is always being recommended to me.

@@historywithhilbert146 Probably from watching your videos I only saw it last week, I liked the analysis here

@@historywithhilbert146 Just pointing out that Eddie is trans and doesn't go by he/him anymore. She's transgender I'm pretty sure.

@@bobettepancakes at the time of the og video she was still a he, so 'he' makes more sense here.

@@Lord_RFAS fair enough

My sentiment as well.

In Frisian (and Dutch) there is a different word for expressing bewilderment, ferstean specifically means understanding words or a sentence as far as I know. If he was bewildered he would be saying "Ik begryp dat net", which has both meanings, or "Ik snap dat net", which only means bewilderment

@@Rerbun in Flemish though, the phrase "k verstoan da nie" can mean both "I don't understand" as well as "I don't get it"...

@@thefreephilosopher7398 interesting!

Modern high german also has both, "verstehen" and "begreifen". "verstehen" is usually more about linguistically not understanding while "begreifen" is usually more about not understanding a concept or idea, but both can be used for both. And even the sentences "ich verstehe das nicht" and "ich begreife das nicht" show how close the languages are.

What highschool has old English?! Never heard of that here in the US

@@paulyperreira2795 Pasadena High School in California in 1966 🤪

@@loislewis5229 that’s so cool! Wish my old highschool had that. My school only had Spanish, French, and Italian for foreign language. Although since I’m in North Jersey, none of those languages are foreign lmaoo

@@paulyperreira2795 Oh, it was not a separate class but rather a portion of my English class. I took German in high school, but they also offered French and Latin.

@@loislewis5229 ahh I see. That’s super interesting

Cognate with English booth (or bothy) + house?

Wikipedia says that Hlypers only has about 300 speakers. That's so cool that you can speak it! I'd love to know what it sounds like.

I'd like to

Me too.

@@KungFucianist I come from a city only 3 kilometres away from where they speak Hylpers and I don't understand a word of it.

@@HugoWorkum Liid út Workum doage ek naat..

Is there a word in Frisian that is a cognate of the English word booth? I ask this because the boer seemed to mistranslate bycgan as meaning a shed; and English got the word from the Old Norse 'buth', which was a small hut or shelter. We have the place name Bootle not far from where I live near Liverpool, which has this as an origin.

The only words I can think of are: - Skuorre (which is a big shed, in most cases particularity used for animals on a farm, a barn) - Hok (A normal shed, to store tools and other stuff) - Hutte (Just a hut) For the word booth (as in a car) we use 'kofferbak' (literal translation: suitcase box) or 'achterbak' (behind box). As you can see our language found another word for it, but that's not too strange as it is quite a new word. I think the farmer was trying to guess what 'bycgan' could mean as he tried to repeat it for himself, but he just did not understand. So he just went with the words that he did understand, which was the brown cow. I don't think there is a similar word for booth in the Frisian I speak. Edit: Another thing I just thought up is that he might have thought 'bycgan' sounds a bit like 'bûten' (which you say like the country 'Bhutan', but then replace the 'a' when an -uh- sound). That word means 'outside', but they were outside so it would not make a lot of sense.

@@alfresco8442 We have the word bûthûs. Which kinda sounds like 'boot hoos'. It translates to cow house, country house, cowshed.

@@walterrob5567 That sounds exactly like what he's saying, Walter. We also have a few different words for a cowshed. One of which is shippon, which goes way back in Germanic and is related to both English 'shop' and German 'Schuppen'. The other is cow byre, which I think comes from the Old Norse equivalent of the W. Germanic burg...byr. In England, you can tell some Anglo Saxon settlements from the Viking, because English ones end in bury, borough or burgh and Norse ones end in by. The Old English version was spelt 'burh' but was pronounced exactly like a modern Nederlander might pronounce burg, with a slightly gutteral g.

@@alfresco8442 This video is about Old English and modern Frisian. However, there's also Old Frisian which was was replaced with modern Frisian around 500 years ago. I'm not familiar with Old Frisian except for some words. But it's interesting to see that the Old Frisian word for mouth is mūth. The modern Frisian word is mûle.

Thanks Mike! I was hoping some people would indeed be wondering that when I recently watched the video again after many years. It does have some interesting implications for mutual intelligibility like the role of syntax and cognates etc.

@@historywithhilbert146 unironically his old English is better than I expected it'd be.

Yep i thought this was awesome as a kid but now its a bit lel and very english

hahha cool note about soundings!)

doesn't help that both old english and icelandic both use þ and ð

old English should sound a bit like icelandic. Old English and Old norse were somewhat intelligible between each other, though definitely different languages, and icelandic hasn't changed that much from old norse.

@@matteo-ciaramitaro Icelandic has huge changes in it's phonetics

@@unraed right, I mean grammar and spelling and vocabulary haven't changed that much (but they have changed a bit) and these two are important parts of intelligibility. Pronunciation is also very important. In some cases some vowel shifts moved closer to english but there were many that moved away. If we have the question of whether an old norse speaker would understand modern icelandic, there's a channel on youtube called ecolinguist that gets people who speak different languages together to see how intelligible they are, and when they did Norwegian, danish and icelandic with an old norse professor the icelandic and old norse speaker communicated very well. it's not a perfect experiment though because they both also know english, which may occasionally help with understanding, especially if a pronunciation has shifted closer to english.

Hi. I have the Book The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. BBC Publications, Faber and Faber 1986. Chapter 7 re. the pioneers in US. Footnote on p.235 says. "Observant readers will notice, to their pain or pleasure, that this chapter has adopted American spellings". ! Liverpool UK 🕊️

“Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Fries.” sounds almost like the Frisian “Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.” That’s the classic rhyme that linguists use to show the relationship.

Yeah, English isn’t a real language, it’s four pidgins in a trench coat pretending to be Latin

As a Norwegian the following would sound very familiar to you: alve tolve trettjin fjirtjin

from what I understand the Frisians have traveled a lot in Scandinavia, many of them have also moved to Scandinavia as colorists because their country after a sea level rise. maybe your ancestors are Frisian 😉

@@walterrob5567 yes In norwegian it would be Elve Tolv Tretten Fjorten It might be written quite differently but when i pronounced them while reading your comment it sounds almost identical haha. Actually it sounds a lot like how my grandad who lived further indland would pronounce it. I

I was really surprised at how similar frisian is to norwegian!

my mother is Frisian, but I can't speak the Frisian language, something that I still regret.

Could be a fun experiment to do at some point eh!

@@historywithhilbert146 yea it would be real interesting

I am Friesian and i volunteer for this experiment

I know that Simon Roper spoke Old English with a North Frisian if your interested in watching that

@@Bryce-yw8hf I've seen it

dutch: we gaan... we're going

Kopen* in Dutch, koppen is to headbut in football😂

@@tijnaltena5718 headbutt

@@dickwagenaar3684 fair

Oh that'd be cool if that's where the slang verb "cop" came from

I’m like 99% sure that isn’t where the American slang “cop” comes from lol

Is the Modern English "to shop" not also from ceapan?

@@johnlove3505 You'd think so, but I believe it comes from the Old French Eschoppe meaning a booth. However many French words are of either Germanic or common origin; and eschoppe is related to the German Schopf (porch) and the English shippon (cow shed).

Echt? De groetnis fan my! Asto it leuk fynst kinst faaks him de fideo sjen litte?

It is echt wier!! Ik ha de video trochstjoert nei de familie yn whatsapp. Myn heit is syn broer. Ik wenje net yn Fryslân, mar hâld fan de taal. De man is no 92 jier âld!

@@cynthiamolenaar770 Ik fyn dat echt sa moai - tige datst it sein hast! Machtich moai!

@@cynthiamolenaar770 Asto it net slim fynst soe ik graach wat freegje wolle deroer. At it om dy net núver is soest my in mail stjoere kinne nei historywithhilbert@gmail.com? Tige!

Germanic sea words in English: Sea, boat, starboard , boat , ship , skipper , Hull , sail , island , beach , strand , dive , deep , yacht , swim , bait and likely many more.

Shakespeare and Chaucer are easier to understand if you hear them than if you read them. Likewise, French, Spanish, and Italian speakers find Interlingua (a constructed language based mostly on late Vulgar Latin) similar to how English speakers find Shakespeare.

I don't know if you know this, but English, Frisian, Sanskrit, and Pali are all descended from the same language: Proto-Indo-European. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-indo-european

@@wesleyrajpara6023 Thanks, yes I actually know this fact, that all of these languages stem from Proto-Indo European, but nevertheless I was quite surprised of finding actual examples in Thai, being it such a vastly different culture. And the Frisian/Dutch pronunciation is also more similar to those words than English, e.g. "man" not like the English "man" but sounds like the German Mann.

I was thinking about the highland coos--how that pronunciation hasn't changed. But it's interesting that you mentioned "that there cow" because because that's something I would not be surprised to hear from someone who speaks with an older Appalachian dialect here in Tennessee. Of course, this whole area was settled by Scots and Irish immigrants, and supposedly our accent is the closest to Shakespearean English, before the British vowel shift. When I went to pubs to listen to traditional music in Ireland, it was the same as bluegrass here, minus a banjo.

I believe the Germanic and Slavic are cognates rather than borrowings but it's indeed very interesting that these forms are so similar.

It's a borrowing from Latin as far as I know.

Å kjøpe - to buy, in Norwegian

"kaufen" in German, where a lot of the Ps from English and Dutch turned into F's - so definitely close :)

@@neilcook4686 and forstår du meg was so close too

Hi Marc, will have a video looking at a bit of Low German soon :)

@@historywithhilbert146 low German and low Saxon / old Saxon aren't directly related. old Saxon stems from Ingvaeonic like old Frisian, Anglic and Jutes. where low German including low Franconian, Dutch and other north and west German dialects stems from Istvaeonic

@@marcchef98 Low Saxon and Low German are synonyms, sometimes people include low Franconian in low German but that is incorrect. The dialects in north east Netherlands and north Germany are descended from the Old Saxon language. The dialect Tweants is westphalian and Gronings is very similar to east Frisian low Saxon dialects in Germany. The dialects in Germany and the Netherlands are 100% directly related.

@@wowfly6485 true, as someone who is born in the province of Groningen I can confirm that the dialect that I speak isn't that different from the dialect in the Eastern Frisia part in Germany.

Swedish here too. I understand these too. 😁

One confusion I can think of is that in the Scots language, there's still the tendency to add -en to words in order to make them plural, whereas Frisian mostly uses the -s suffix for plural words. The languages have a good bit of similarity, which is to be expected since a great deal of the Scots language came from older forms of German. I'd be interested to see a Scots speaker and Frisian speaker attempt a conversation.

@@danielthompson6207 Doesnt Frisian use a lot of - en as well though, like Dutch? I know really correct Frisian uses - s as well, my girlfriend comes from another part of Fryslân and says "earms" instead of "earmen" when talking about the plural of the word "arm". When talking about feet we dont say "fuots" but say "fuotten" or another word entirely, skonken.

@@danielthompson6207The N-plurals in Scots are so extremely few in number that you can count them with your fingers. The -s plural is what Scots uses normally

As a Frisian who has learned Norwegian and Danish i notice many similarities, a bit more to Danish than Norwegian, but that would be expected as it is geographically closer to Friesland. Yes, we use "ferstean" for "understand", which in Danish is "forstå". Which of course looks very much like Swedish "förstor". I did not study Swedish, but i can read most because of it's similarities to Norwegian and Danish. Frisian "keapje" (to buy) is "kopen" in Dutch, which looks even more like Swedish "köpa". What's fun to me in learning other Germanic languages, is at first the languages seem/sound quite different from each other, but when you delve into them, you really begin to see how they are related and notice all kinds of similarities. One thing i found is the Frisian and also Dutch word for "afraid" is "bang", which is also used in Danish, but not in German and also not in Swedish and Norwegian. I wonder, what is the reason why the Danes, the Dutch and the Frisians use this same word with the same meaning, but the surrounding countries do not(?) Currently i'm learning Icelandic, which is probably the least changed Germanic language throughout the many centuries since the viking age (correct me if i'm wrong) and is supposed to be quite similar to Old-Norse (what the vikings spoke) and even with Icelandic i'm noticing how Icelandic connects to all other Germanic languages. Finnish, of course is no Germanic language itself, but does it have much Swedish influence?

While at the same time Estonian which is a Finno Ugric language also has loan words which come directly from Baltic German. In Estonian Kaubamayya is used for large shop or department store and comes from Baltic German. This would indicate to me the closeness of Swedish and German as we go further back. These loan words relating to business and trade reflect a common usage during the Hanseatic league.

Perhaps reflect a common usage .......

They are cognates, like Russian "kupit'".

In Dutch we also use 'verstaan". In standard Dutch it sounds like "versta je mij?" and it means: "do you hear me / did you hear what I said to you". "Do you understand me" would be "begrijp je mij" However, in many south Dutch dialects "versta je mij" does mean "do you understand me"... F.ex. Brussels dialect: "verstodde ma?", West Flemish: "verstao je mi?" It's so very close to most of the Germanic languages and dialects! It's really mind blowing how this remains largely unknown to the Germanic speaking world. Of course, as Dutch speakers we are aware of the closeness of German but for me it is really due to the Scandinavian crime series(*) that a door was opened to the understanding that the Germanic languages still are simply a kind of continuum where the language barriers can easily be broken trough. (*) I fell from my chair a few times when hearing Norwegian or Swedish sentences that sounded exactly the same, word for word, as in Dutch. Danish is a whole different animal though, but I feel like it reads more easily than f.ex. Swedish, strangely enough ...

@@taiqidong9841 Big thanks for the information. We also have something that’s very close to “begrijp je mij” we would say “begriper du mig” which mens the same thing.

Ferstiest = firstān in Old High German, but because of all these Sound shifts German went through, it changed to verstehen, but it's pronounced a bit similar.

Like to 'cop a feel', to touch something.

@@orangew3988 kop a load of that ! ( that isi unbelievable - look at that )

Looking at the etymology, both seem not to be cognates of cheap/keapje/kaufen/kopen/köpa/kjøpe etc. Just coincidentally a similar word.

Thanks Bill, glad you enjoyed it!

That's because the Germanic and Latin/Romance languages (as we call them) have common roots in what is called Proto-Indo-European if you go far back enough.

Meaning Frisian, of course.

Glad I could be of help :)

Certainly! In Frisian we can see how quite a lot of the phonemes are even closer together: 'ik haw (pron: haf) in apel en in brea.'

Yes they are :)

In Afrikaans (obviously from the Dutch) we have "koopman".

Along with "koopman" and "keapman"...

Where did you hear that? It is very similar to a shibboleth, famously used by Grutte Pier. "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis - wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries"

@@GerbenH I just can't recall. I know it was quite a long time ago. It's just something that stuck in my head, and now every time I hear something about Frisian, it comes to mind. Maybe I got it from some notes in a Beowulf translation. That seems to tickle my memory.

@@GerbenH Ah, here's the wiki on the rhyme. I was off in my remembering. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language#:~:text=One%20rhyme%20that%20is%20sometimes,goed%20Ingelsk%20en%20goed%20Frysk%22.

@@GerbenH Folklore tab, second paragraph.

Indeed