Not talking about comics, rather on books (like actual novels containing chapters consisting of only words). They say that both French and German are “closest” to English but still different languages, however even if an English speaker were going to learn either language, does it mean can they understand written text from books or is that hard even with cognates?
It depends on the genre of the reading material, also affects difficulty regarding vocabulary. Such as: thriller (crime): has terminology, uses expressions and bundled in sentences that are beyond A2 level proficiency while YA (teen) may be written within a beginner lens. This is not the same as reading a sign in French as a English speaker as books have blocks of text.
Even in the reverse: what is the recommended level (from A1-C1+) for a non native who is learning English as a second language to read an entire book (like those written by Lee Child, Agatha Christie) fluently with understanding not only the contents written but infer on the novels concepts and relay reading comprehension akin to a native speaker?
Who are they? Because they are wrong. The closest step cousin to English is Frisian. Dutch is closer to English than French, I’d argue.
Novel ≠ novel. It would have to be contemporary and not written in overly complicated language. Novels are mostly not written for learners to read. Even people who are fluent will miss stuff because culture doesn’t come in a dictionary. So can they understand everything at that level? Nope. Can they understand enough? Probably. Arguably more so in German because it doesn’t fuck with a version of the past tense that only shows up in literature.
That’s not a great statistic. Future diplomats will have college degrees. They will have pre-existing language knowledge. That’s too narrow a sample if you ask me.
And they wouldn’t teach them Frisian anyway because it’s a minority language spoken on the mainland North Sea coast from The Netherlands to Denmark.
AFAIK Frisian is only spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland, and not even the the whole province. Groningen (Dutch) and Ost-Friesland (German) speak a Lower Saxon dialect which is a different minority language all together. Their version is different from most Lower Saxon dialects (both German and Dutch) though.
The Dutch have the highest concentration of Frisian speakers. But there are other people along the cost as well, thinning out towards the North. Hence, a minority language.
Scots and Guyanese are closer
Scots a full brother. And where in Europe do they speak Guyanese?
They don’t speak it in Europe, they speak it in Guyana
Would you say that’s relevant then to this discussion?