Re: Dutch-like language [OT]

On 3/12/2024 11:59 pm, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Last night in the 80-metre band I heard two 'hams' talking.  The vowel
sounds of their voices seemed to be characteristically Dutch (an accent
like the Groningen area) but the language was completely
incomprehensible.  I listened for several minutes but didn't hear a
single word I recognised
 Do any of our Dutch contributors know of some dialect that is Dutch in
sound but does not use the standard Dutch language?
 [I tried to send this to Jan by e-mail but the address I found for him
on the Web just bounced.]

As Jan said, it could have been Fries. To German's Dutch sounds like yet another low German dialect.
The historical reality is that Dutch was the dominant German dialect in northern Europe during the Dutch golden age, and high German is the Prussian dialect spoken at the court of Frederick the Great - he preferred to use French - which got enforced as the official court language in the countries Prussian came to rule. The other low German dialects still persist as local dialects.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney