Shit like that confused me like crazy in europe. Like some of the germans couldn't understand other germans even though they spoke the same langauge while the polish and Hungarians who spoke different languages could understand eachother. I was very confused at times to say the least...
Well, that's a dialect thing here. If southern Germans and northern Germans talk to each other in their dialects, chances are high that they really won't understand a word. It's maybe comparable to a guy from the depths of some swamp in Mississippi is talking to somebody from Seattle, each of them will use certain words or sayings the other one never heard before.
Speaking school German to a Dutch guy thus can work out and vice versa.
We have other type of difference: often we have same words but with different meaning because etymology of these words has one root but different evolution. For example "pozor". Root of the word is "zor", "zr" (meaning vision, sight). In Russian pozor means "shame". Czech meaning is "warning".
Pozor means the same in Croatian! Slavic words are so interesting in how they change their prefixes/suffixes and meanings depending on the language. Most of them have same roots, but over time end up meaning different things.
Edit: pozor+no also means "with attention", while zor+no means "vividly". I've always liked etymology so these kinds of things really excite me hahaha
Speaking school German to a Dutch guy thus can work out and vice versa.
Edit: pozor+no also means "with attention", while zor+no means "vividly". I've always liked etymology so these kinds of things really excite me hahaha