Can germans understand dutch? can poles understand other slavs?

no

Can lithuanians understand latvians?

Well I can understand 90%~ of Dutch when it's spoken. It's kinda like Plattdötsch. But it's more common in the north. Would think it's more difficult for Germans coming from Berlin or more south.

I know that most Dutchies can understand German since they have mandatory German language classes in school.

There is a lot of individual words that are close enough to understand but swedish just like gibberish.

>can germans understand dutch?
Sadly, yes

>poles can understand czechs
Nope

A bit

Learning German or Dutch is basically learning an heavy dialect, really. With some basic knowledge about the other language, then 70% of it all will just fall into place. The word order is largely the same (although Germans sometimes use shortened sentences that are impossible in Dutch), most Dutch words are the same as in German or English, word endings are usually just an accent difference. Although we do have a lot of false friends where words have been mixed up, where you assume the meaning is the same, but it actually isn't. It are very common words as well.

The biggest problem is that Dutch speakers tend to speak in a Dutch dialect. And German speakers in a German dialect. So the standard tv accents don't always apply irl, which can be quite confusing.

hmm

The short answer would be "not really". The languages, besides being two closest languages to each other, are still quite differrent. Reading is manageable, if only to get the basic meaning of the topic, speech is a fair bit harder. Samogitians might have an easier time understanding it, since they share similar accentuation. Listening to latvian gives you that uncanny feeling of something similar and recognizable, but not quite understandable speech. Imagine you've been woken up from sleeping by your friend, and he's saying something to you. The first couple seconds you won't be able to process what the fuck he's saying to you. That's what listening to latvian feels like.

It's not as easy as Slovak, but we can make a decent guess usually. Unless false friends are involved. Then all the bets are off.

Attached: Screenshot_2019-06-17 False Friends of the Slavist Polish-Czech - Wikibooks, open books for an open (1094x802, 36K)

thank you for detailed answer

Is Russian language harder to understand than Czech for Polish native speaker?

Can you make such a table of your understanding of Slavic languages?

I can understand speech on:

Belorussian ~85-90%
Ukrainian ~55-65%
Polish ~30-40%
Czech/Slovak ~20-30%
Croatian ~30%
Serbian ~25%
Balkan Slavs ~25%
Slovenian ~15%

understanding spoken dutch is literally impossible, but written it's mostly understandable. There's major differences in some very basic words but pretty much every somewhat specific term feels like a written representation of dialect. Swedish on the other hand feels like it's understandable but as soon as you try to figure it out it turns into gibberish.

This basically: Spoken Dutch however isn't even a real language.

I believe Russian should be harder to undestand than Czech for native Polish speakers. But since a lot of people learned some Russian at school the reality might be rather different.

Accurate percentages might be too much, but I believe for me from the easiest to most difficult it would be:
Slovak(/Kashubian/Silesian)
Czech/Russian
Ukrainian (West)/Belarussian
Ukrainian (East)
SCBM
Slovene
---power gap---
Bulgarian/Macedonian

Understanding a written text is also a lot easier than spoken language for me. Please note that I had three years of (shitty) Russian classes in high school. I can't write or speak much, but my reading is okay. If I chose an English/German classes combo, I'd likely have to put all East Slavic languages down by one tier.

I wish there were languages close enough to French so I could understand them, I can't understand shit when an Italian or spaniard is talking

German from Polish family who moved to the Netherlands recently here
Yes, if you know a slavic language, you can understand the other ones decently, especially Czech. I can understand some spoken Russian but sadly I can't read their slavrunes.
Dutch and German are definitely very close. Written Dutch is pretty easy to understand if you know some basic stuff like how to pronounce things. For example, "Kuh" (cow) is written "koe" in Dutch, but both words are pronounced the same. If you know a few common words then you can get the gist of basic texts as a German.
Spoken Dutch however is a whole different thing though, especially with the numerous dialects that exist there. I learned some Dutch before moving here but I couldn't some people at all cause of their dialect (I live in the south).

Thank you for answer.