Is German really harsh?

People who don’t speak German often like to joke about the harsh sound of the language. Truth be told, German isn’t the gentlest-sounding language. It doesn’t seem to flit off the tongue the way Spanish or French do, despite having some of the same linguistic bases.

How mutually intelligible are German and Dutch?

The Levenshtein distance between written Dutch and German is 50.4\% as opposed to 61.7\% between English and Dutch. The spoken languages are much more difficult to understand for both. Studies show Dutch speakers have slightly less difficulty in understanding German speakers than vice versa.

Why does German sound harsher than other languages?

German is largely squishy. English is much harsher, with all its unvoiced consonants. German does not sound harsher than other languages in general. I suspect you make the claim based on movies or on militaristic German, maybe even that of Hitler (who was Austrian by the way).

How close are Dutch and German linguistically?

Dutch and German are close linguistically, although not as close as those languages that are known for being mutually intelligible like the Scandinavian languages or many of the Slavic languages. The closeness comes down to the two languages being of the same branch of the same language family.

Can Dutch speakers understand German?

There’s no denying that Dutch and German are two different languages, and they’re actually so different that a Dutch speaker with no previous knowledge of German would be unable to understand anything a German speaker would say. Studies have found, however, that Dutch speakers can understand roughly 50\% of written German.

Which is easier to learn Dutch or German?

Dutch has simpler grammar and is lexically more similar to English than German. Therefore, logically the answer should be straightforward: Dutch is easier! However, learning a language is not simply a question of how familiar the grammar and words are to languages you already know.