Originally Posted by
acidfast7
Is "vrouw" in Dutch the same as "frau" in German?
Yes, but not to adress someone, than it's mevrouw, like madame, my lady. 'Frau Dr. Merkel' would become 'hey Angela' anyway, German and Germans are much more formal.
[quoteI guess that I can understand a fair bit of Dutch when it's spoken, but I've never learned it phonetically. "Vrije" is "Frei" or "free" essentially? So maybe the Vr makes the f? Also that IJ digraph is pretty cool.[/QUOTE]
It's often difficult for visitors because they don't realise it's only one vowel, just like 'ei', 'ui', 'ie', 'ou' and 'oe', which makes road signs and things like that unnecessarily unreadable. It's most simular to the Y like in why, and it alsof functions as a 'j' and the end of a syllable sometimes. Older generations of Dutch English speakers often tend to pronounce the English Y, and I, as in why and vibe as the Dutch ij or ei, but both are very different from the German ei, which is close to the English Y/I. I don't believe there's any even remotely related language that knows the 'ij' or the 'ui' sound.
In lots of cases the Germans use the F the Dutch use the V, but not always and it could also be the other way around. The V can also replace the German B, like in geben and leben. Come to think of it, the Dutch seem quite fond of the V, if they pronounce a word starting with an F but want emphasis on it, the F often becomes a V. This is not correct, but most people speak Dutch very sloppy, unlike the Germans speaking German. In general most Dutch are very indifferent to speaking it correctly, but quite enthousiast in beeing creative with it's expressive power and subtle changes of meaning/message with intonation.