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Comment by mokkol | Hacker News Reader

Interesting! I think Dutch (Mix between french, german and english) is even closer to English. I am not an expert, just thinking out loud.

  de -> the
  drie -> three (ie and ee got the same pronunciation)
  donder -> thunder
  ding -> ding
  daarvoor -> therefore
  dit -> this
  dat -> that
  donderdag -> thursday
  vader -> father
  moeder -> mother

and a lot more similarities:

  school -> school
  week -> week
  weekend -> weekend
  maand -> month
  vrijdag -> friday
  maandag -> monday
  uit -> out
  goed -> good
  voor -> for
  je -> you
  mij -> my (pronounced the same)
  wij -> we
  auto -> auto
  wagen -> wagen
  kar -> car

And the p to f (I guess also in german)

  slaap -> sleep
  schip -> ship

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Your observations of dutch being closer to English in some way than German, is correct. However, saying that Dutch is mix between German, English and French is quite wrong (disclaimer: I am not Dutch).

English, Dutch and German are all classified as western germanic languages, meaning they probably derived from a single ancestor language some time ago. Note that 'germanic' has nothing to do with German or Germany, a common misconception because the two words are similar in English.

Dutch is often more similar to English because German underwent the so called high german consonant shift (essentially changing t -> s or z, p -> pf and some others I think), in which Dutch and English didn't participate. There are some words that highlight this quite nicely:

  english   dutch    german

  appel     appel     apfel
  plough    ploeg     pflug
  better    beter     besser
  toth      tand      zahn

I was with you until appel and toth, which don't seem to be English words at all... *apple and tooth

hmm yeah, was too preoccupied with getting the layout right, so some typos crept in :)

I mentioned the similarly of Dutch in a different reply. You'll actually also find quite a few places where Dutch is more similar to Scandinavian languages than to English as well. Norway has two official languages, for the most part my examples are from Bokmål ("book language") which basically started out as a formalisation of Danish as used in Norway. I've prepended the Norwegian:

  tre -> drie -> three (ie and ee got the same pronunciation)
  torden -> donder -> thunder
  ting -> ding -> ding
  derfor -> daarvoor -> therefore

  dette -> dit -> this
  det -> dat -> that

But, we also have the term "ditt og datt" -> this and that...

  torsdag -> donderdag -> thursday

  far, but also the informal/slang "fatter" and the old-fashioned "fader" ->  vader -> father
  mor, and the older/slang form "moder" (mødre, transliterated "moedre" is the plural form of
  both versions) -> moeder -> mother

and a lot more similarities:

  skole -> school -> school
  uke in bokmål, but "veke" in Nynorsk (based on spoken Norwegian dialects) -> week -> week
  weekend (though that is a modern import from English) -> weekend -> weekend
  måned (maaned) -> maand -> month
  fredag -> vrijdag -> friday
  mandag -> maandag -> monday
  ut -> uit -> out
  god -> goed -> good
  for -> voor -> for
  du -> je -> you
  min -> mij -> my (pronounced the same)
  vi -> wij -> we
  auto -> auto -> auto
  vogn -> wagen -> wagen
  bil (we got our word from the end of automobil; 
  English got its from old French, I assume that's where yours come from too) -> kar -> car

And the p to f (I guess also in german) søvn / sove (but we also have "slappe av" -> relax, rest) -> slaap -> sleep skip -> schip -> ship

Friesan is even more similar: Rye bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese.

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