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A comment on The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725). Parent comment

Re:The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725) by barry-cotter on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @11:11AM (#24354000)
> I don't know about Sweden, but my impression of the Netherlands is that they teach foreign languages very early

I don’t think this is the case. I believe it’s all Dutch, all the time through primary school. They don’t dub anything though, everything is subtitled whether it’s in English, French, German or something else. And Dutch is the closest living language to English unless you count Scots. Dutch people speaking great English is as surprising as Portuguese speaking great Spanish, except English is a great deal more useful.

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Re:The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725) by Mediterraneo10 on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:29AM (#24362289)
"And Dutch is the closest living language to English unless you count Scots."

Dutch is from a different branch of Germanic than English. The "closest relative" is typically held to be Frisian, which is part of the same Germanic subgroup as English.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language

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