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🇩🇪 → 🇳🇱

How easy is Dutch for German speakers?

Going from German to Dutch (Nederlands) has a composite linguistic distance of 22% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

22% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours
Lexical similarity
80%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
69%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
25%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match
100%

Latin → Latin

Genealogical kinship
100%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇩🇪 German
Het kind speelt in de tuin met zijn hond.
🇳🇱 Dutch
Das Kind spielt im Garten mit seinem Hund.
🇩🇪 German
De winter is lang maar de zomer is warm en mooi.
🇳🇱 Dutch
Der Winter ist lang aber der Sommer ist warm und schön.

Curated cognates between German and Dutch

Word pairs that share a common etymological root — instantly recognisable across both languages:

Other easy languages for German speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from German:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between German and Dutch. No signup.