The tool measures distance with vocabulary. Afrikaans may be closer in vocabulary but pronounced very differently (since there’s way less cross talking since it’s so isolated), which would make it harder to understand to a Dutch speaker?
Yes. This is often true. But Flemish and Dutch are far far closer in linguistic distance than dutch and german.
And they are completely mutually intelligeble. Unlike Dutch and German, (which I prefer to call hochdeutsch, since german is a nationalist contruct that erases many other languages spoken by peoples living in Germany-Switzerland-Austria.)
Like here we get a distance between Flemish and Dutch of 5.6, that’s the lowest I’ve ever seen with this tool.
While 13.5 with Dutch and German.
Compare that to French and Occitan, Occitan is a Romance language in southern France, which got erased and often claimed it’s just “part of french”. The distance between them is 20.
Edit: Playing round a bit more with the tool, Your point is proven. The distance between Dutch and Afrikaans is lower. Only 2. Yet that’s considered different languages.
As of June 30, 2025, approximately 4.31 million people who left Ukraine as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion have temporary protection status in EU countries.
These data were published on August 11 by Eurostat, according to Ukrinform.
Among EU countries, the largest number of temporary protection status recipients from Ukraine were accepted by Germany (1,196,645 people; 27.8% of the total), Poland (992,505; 23%), and the Czech Republic (378,420; 8.8%).
The indigenous people were doinf controlled burns and had this all under control.
But then the colonisers took over and were more woried about protecting short term property value than long term sustainability so we got overzealous fire protection as a ticking time bomb.
Arctic rivers are sending a warning. Climate change is changing the type of nitrogen they carry. This shift matters because marine life depends on a specific form of nitrogen to survive.
A new study led by Bridger J. Ruyle atNYU Tandon reveals what’s going wrong. His team tracked the six largest Arctic rivers for 20 years. What they found: these rivers now deliver much less of the usable, inorganic nitrogen. Instead, they carry more of the harder-to-use, organic kind.
As corporate interest in ocean carbon removal grows, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are testing the safety and effectiveness of one such technique in the Gulf of Maine.
The tool measures distance with vocabulary. Afrikaans may be closer in vocabulary but pronounced very differently (since there’s way less cross talking since it’s so isolated), which would make it harder to understand to a Dutch speaker?