Quote Originally Posted by Oregano View Post
Actually, I spelt it correctly, I even spell checked it to make sure. But your pronounciation seems correct.

And English is based primarily off German, not Dutch, but apparently they're really similar.
If we're going to do the actual language taxonomy, then we have the following:

English, Dutch, and German are all West-Germanic languages.

These can be further divided into forms of High West Germanic and Low West Germanic.

The prime example of High West Germanic is (High) German.

The prime examples of Low West Germanic are (Low) Dutch and English.

The primary differences between High and Low West Germanic are the consonant shift which was only present in High. And the vowel shift which was only present in Low.

This makes it so that Dutch and English sound pretty similar, while German sounds distinctly different.

If it wasn't for the huge amount of Romance loans in English, Dutch and English would be remarkably similar.

It isn't for nothing that what most scholars deem to be the oldest written form of Dutch might actually have been English.