Delfzijl
Modern Dutch language is understood every where and many people speak English, German, and French. Gronings dialect is found routinely spoken in outlying villages, resembling old dialects along the coast nearby in Germany and Denmark. Local television carries Dutch and popular broadcasts from other countries and languages. Delfzijl is accustomed to receiving visitors and guest workers from foreign countries.Delfzijl is twinned with:
Danish language
Danish and English are both Germanic languages, Danish a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse and English a West Germanic language descended from Old English, and Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period. To see their shared Germanic heritage, one merely has to note the many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, commonly used Danish nouns and prepositions such as "have", "over", "under", "for", "give", "flag," "salt," and "kat" are easily recognizable in their written form to English speakers. Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g., "kirke" (Scots "kirk", i.e., 'church') or "barn" (Scots "bairn", i.e. 'child'). In addition, the word "by", meaning "village" or "town", occurs in many English place-names, such as "Whitby" and "Selby", as remnants of the Viking occupation. During the latter period, English adopted "are", the third person plural form of the verb "to be", as well as the corresponding personal pronoun form "they" from contemporary Old Norse.