[ekr]

That's strange (i.e. different from my experience). I've been living in the Netherlands since 2021, speak some (~ B1) Dutch, but good English and German. Dutch language was from day one comprehensible due to German similarity. Many/most words either sound like the German equivalent to the point where you naturally match them in your thought, or they are written (mostly) like the German equivalent.

The connection between Dutch and English languages is far more minimal in comparison. In fact, when I first faced the language, I would have said it was a combination of ~80% German, 10% English, 5% French, +5% Others.

[vidarh]

Written Dutch is fairly easy for me, on the basis of English + native Norwegian + German from school. Spoken Dutch is largely unintelligible for me, on the other hand, unless they speak very slowly.

> In fact, when I first faced the language, I would have said it was a combination of ~80% German, 10% English, 5% French, +5% Others.

But the vocabulary of English itself is majority of Germanic origin. So while Dutch is often closer to the modern German, there's definitely far more than 10% that has a common origin with English as well as German.