My Book Review for Language Lovers: "Comparative Grammar of German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian"
If you love languages and are learning German or Dutch, you’ll enjoy my review of “Comparative Grammar of German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and Frisian. Learn 5 Germanic Languages at the Same Time.” Robertson B Kunz, 2024. Available on Amazon.com
Robbie’s book gives you a solid comparative grammar of these five languages. But it’s also much more. He explains how German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian are interconnected historically and socially. And on top of that, he teaches you a few tricks about keeping languages apart as you learn new ones. Not a bad skill to have!
For me, Robbie’s “Comparative Grammar” has been fascinating because it makes me tackle language learning in a new way. (See also Learning Swedish, Norwegian and Danish simultaneously?, my review of his previous book.) I grew up speaking German, Dutch and English in that order, and I continue to use all three languages in daily life at home and with friends. Also, I understand some Afrikaans and Yiddish, and a little Frisian, but until now, I’ve known little about their history and development.
Looking at languages in a comparative way has its own pleasures. During my day, I switch back and forth between English, German and Dutch. It’s kind of a game to notice and talk about similarities and differences between the languages. For example:
Pronunciation: Sound of the letter “g”: The English “g” in “go” and in German “gehen” is hard; but the Dutch “g” in “gaan” is a soft “ch”.
Grammar: The definite article: English “the” is “de” or “het” in Dutch; but in German you’ve got a string of possibilities - “der, die das, des, dem, den” (depending on gender and noun case).
Spelling of cognates: “apple” (English); “appel” (Dutch); “Apfel” (German). “day” (English); “dag” (Dutch); “Tag” (German). “book” (English); “boek” (Dutch); “Buch” (German).
Robbie’s book is a fun help with such language puzzles. And it’s a great way to just mess around with Germanic languages. Plus, with the examples he adds from Afrikaans, Yiddish, Frisian, and briefly also Scots, Low Saxon and Luxembourgish, he rounds out the language picture in a compelling way.
Puzzles and language dabbling aside, you can’t beat “Comparative Grammar of German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian” as a resource for serious language learning. Here’s quick look at the structure of the book:
Historical, Geographical, Social context
For the first 100 pages or so, Robbie presents the development of each of the languages from Proto-Germanic to Modern times, putting them in a historical, geographical and social context.
You can read these pages through all at once, or to go back and forth between the sections that interest you specially.
Because German, Dutch, and English were already part of my schooling, I found the sections on Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian particularly interesting.
For each language and its stage of development, there’s a list of linguistic features, showing changes in sounds, forms, and syntax.
Dialects
This section (about 15 pages) presents a variety of dialects and sub-dialects for each of the languages, their geographical distribution and linguistic features. Interesting, because you may know people who speak a certain dialect, or you may have noticed a specific dialect during your travels.
For me dialects have always been part of my life. The German I grew up with was “Bavarian-Austrian”, the variety spoken in Vienna (“Wienerisch”). The Dutch I speak is “Hollandic” (“Hollands”), spoken in the northern provinces of the Netherlands. The first English I learned was British English, with an accent that later amused my Canadian schoolmates. When I got married, more dialects entered my life. My husband grew up in the Frankfurt area, where Hessian is spoken ("Hessisch"), but his dad was from Berlin and spoke the Berlin dialect ("Berlinerish"), and his mother came from southern Germany. She spoke Swabian ("Schwäbisch"). And so it goes.
Grammar and Example Sentences
The main part of Robbie’s book (from page 117 to page 304) is devoted to traditional grammar points: Nouns, Articles, Verbs, Pronouns, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Numbers.
The coverage of grammar is concise but inclusive.
For example, under “Nouns”, the sub-headings are: Definite and Indefinite Articles, Plural Forms of Nouns, Noun Cases, Noun Possession.
Or, as another example, under “Adverbs”, you’ll find the following sub-headings: Position of Adverbs, Adverbs of Manner, Adverbs of Time, Adverbs of Place, Adverbs of Degree.
For each grammar point/sub-heading, you have a clear, easy-to-understand explanation followed by a comparative table showing the grammatical item in German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans and Frisian. It includes a short section of “Notable Differences” between them.
As a special feature of the book, Robbie has added 141 tables with “Example Sentences” in English, German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Frisian to show how they work.
Below are 2 of the tables with “Example Sentences”:
(Note: In the book Yiddish is written in Hebrew letters, as well as in transcription.)
Example Sentence from “Noun Cases
English: The woman is reading a book.
German: Die Frau liest ein Buch.
Yiddish transcription: Di froy leyent a bukh.
Dutch: De vrouw leest een boek.
Afrikaans: Die vrou lees 'n boek.
Frisian: De frou lêst in boek.
Example Sentence from “Position of Adverbs”
English: They went to the park yesterday.
German: Sie sind gestern in den Park gegangen.
Yiddish transcription: Zey zenen nekhtn gegangen tzum park.
Dutch: Ze zijn gisteren naar het park gegaan.
Afrikaans: Hulle het gister na die park gegaan.
Frisian: Se binne juster nei it park gien.
German Language Conversation
In a separate section, Robbie added a 36 item, back-and-forth conversation between five people, each speaking their own language: Hans (German), Pieter (Afrikaans), Lotte (Dutch), Froukje (Frisian), Moishe (Yiddish), set in "A cozy café in a European town". “The challenge is to understand as much as you can just reading it over.” An English translation follows separately.
The first two items of the conversation
1. Hans sitzt am Tisch und schaut auf seine Uhr.
Hans: Ich habe kürzlich über den Wert harter Arbeit nachgedacht, ohne sich auf die Ergebnisse zu konzentrieren. Es scheint eine interessante Philosophie zu sein.
2. Pieter kom laggend binne en sit by die tafel.
Pieter: Ek stem saam! Dis soos om ‘n taal te leer. Jy kan nie net fokus op die einddoel nie; jy moet die proses geniet.
Basic German Language Phrases
Finally, Robbie has put together a section with over 90 basic phrases in all five languages “that you might find in a phrase book - to help those people who might want to travel to the areas where the languages are spoken or to get started with conversation.”
An example
English: What do you like to do?
German: Was machst du gerne?
Yiddish transcription: Vos gefelt dir tsu ton?
Dutch: Wat doe je graag?
Afrikaans: Wat doen jy graag?
Frisian: Wat dochsto graach?
Tips for Learning
Learning with a book such as “Comparative Grammar of German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and Frisian. Learn 5 Germanic Languages at the Same Time”, you’ll need to figure out what will work for you. It may be a good idea to keep in mind the advice of polyglot Alexander Arguëlles: “It is always better to learn languages thoroughly and holistically, and the skills - reading, speaking, listening, and writing - reinforce each other more than you might realize." (Alexander Arguëlles, a reply in the Q&A section on his website). For more about Arguëlles' approach to learning languages, see also Will Language Shadowing Work For You?
1. PARALLEL MATERIAL
The comparative structure and many "parallel" examples in Robbie's book are clearly a strength. As Alexander Arguëlles explains: "Learning different languages with 'parallel material' offers a huge advantage. Seeing similarities and differences helps you to remember words and phrases, but also to keep the languages apart. I would advise you, whenever you can, sound out each phrase so that the different sounds stay with you." (Alexander Arguëlles, a reply in the Q&A section on his website)
2. Listening and pronunciation
Robbie’s book primarily presents visual learning (reading); but he offers his readers a free audio file (via a QR code) “so that you can hear German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian spoken back to back to get a better sense of these five languages.” That’s a good starting point for building listening and pronunciation skills.
To further build on these skills in Yiddish, Afrikaans, and Frisian, you can use other free programs that have these languages, and practice a little with easy sentences. For example:
Yiddish: Duolingo
Afrikaans: a free site for pronunciation, vocabulary, etc, https://www.afrikaans.us/afrikaans/home-afrikaans//
Frisian: a free site with audio for listening practice, https://learnfrisian.com/
For German and Dutch there are many choices, including our site, gamesforlanguage.com
3. Practice Writing
I'm an advocate of copying out phrases and sentences to get into writing a new language. So, write out some of the sentences by hand - one language, or multiple languages side by side - as a way to reinforce your visual memory of the language you’re learning.
4. Learn the Material like Waves
Good advice from Robbie: “Don’t focus on mastering everything before moving on to the next section. Rather, you should learn the material like waves, with each additional pass adding new information." As Professor Arguëlles says, "it should be like peeling an onion with each pass getting progressively deeper in your understanding.”
5. Use the Add-One Approach
For some, including myself, learning several new languages together in full chunks may be a little overwhelming. The image of “peeling an onion” got me thinking: One approach to multiple languages could be to start with a language you know, and add one at a time. For Example, if you know German already, add one language and go through the book focusing on English, German + Dutch. The next step will then be going through the book again, adding one more: English, German + Dutch + Yiddish. Keep adding another language until you’re learning with all five.
6. Time Management
You’ll probably agree with Robbie: “The biggest obstacle you will face is not so much the learning of multiple languages at once as it will be your time management and ability to manage your emotional state. Ultimately, learning any language is a lifelong process and a slow one at that. If you are able to study a little bit each day, one day you will wake up and you will be quite good; although you may never notice yourself reaching that level.”
Disclaimer
I was contacted by Robertson B. Kunz to write this review. In return, I was offered a digital Review Copy of the book. We have no financial agreement about sales of the book.