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Iolanthe’s Dutch Endeavors

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Hobbema
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5745 days ago

541 posts - 575 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch

 
 Message 33 of 116
16 October 2009 at 2:49pm | IP Logged 
Iolanthe, niet slecht!

Keep "flirting" with Portuguese and you never know what might happen. Everyone has to start somewhere, and you have a very good start.

Hobbema
1 person has voted this message useful



Iolanthe
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5645 days ago

410 posts - 482 votes 
Speaks: English*, DutchC1
Studies: Turkish, French

 
 Message 34 of 116
16 October 2009 at 5:29pm | IP Logged 
Dankjewel Hobbema. Ik heb weer niet veel gedaan met Nederlands...alleen een sort van 'onderhoud' van de taal door naar het Nederlands luisteren, zonder woordenboek lezen en dit schrijven. Het komt door het gebrek aan een methode en, ja, verveling :/

Ik heb de eerste les van Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese gedaan. Ik vind de geluid van de taal zo leuk. Het voelt comfortabel om het naar te luisteren en gezien is het in een andere taal familie van Nederlands , is er geen gevaar om verward te worden. Eerlijk kan ik niet naar Duits kijken zonder verward. Ik heb Duits op school geleerd en soms zeg ik een Duitse woord in plaats van de Nederlandse woord en ik denk dat het zal slechter zijn als ik weer Duits studeren. Dus geen Duits tot ik Nederlands goed kennen.
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Hobbema
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5745 days ago

541 posts - 575 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch

 
 Message 35 of 116
17 October 2009 at 2:56am | IP Logged 
I will write in English because I do that better. I am delighted that you are interested in Brazilian Portuguese. You may find the language useful, you may not, but I myself started only with Pimsleur's Brazilian Portuguese, and I completed Unit 17 of Level 1 when I made my first trip to Manaus, Brazil.

I still am by no means fluent, but even then I had conversations with (albeit patient) native speakers, and it was so cool because they seemed so appreciative that I even knew a little bit of their language. Since then my skills are improving, and I can tell they are since I have made several trips down there since then, and communicating gets easier and easier the more I know and the more I study.

I have no idea where your studies will take you, but I think it is awesome that you want to stretch yourself and try something new like this!
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Iolanthe
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5645 days ago

410 posts - 482 votes 
Speaks: English*, DutchC1
Studies: Turkish, French

 
 Message 36 of 116
17 October 2009 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be visiting Brazil any time soon although I would love too so I probably won't get much opportunity to speak it, if I learn it but nevertheless, to me, it's a beautiful language that's worth learning. And of course then we'd be closer to being language twins :D

I also bought Teach Yourself Swedish but I don't really have any intention of doing anything with it now. But it's there, just in case ;)

Ik heb Livemocha ontdekt. Zoals meest talen methoden het gaat niet verder dan 'intermediate' (vriend zegt dat he niet van een woord kan denken in het Nederlands voor 'intermediate' dus het blijft Engels) dus ik heb op de laatste cursus begonnen. Het is interessant om schrijven van andere mensen te corrigeren want ik zie waarom mensen soms mijn Nederlands helemaal veranderen. Het werkt gewoon niet in de taal. Ik heb de kranten gelezen en naar mijn Nederlands mensen en Nederlandstalig muziek geluisterd. Niks bijzonder. Ik heb ook een Portugees les op Livemocha gedaan voor de lol. Ik weet ongeveer vijf woorden in Portugees VIJF WOORDEN!!!! Oh mijn god!
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Iolanthe
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5645 days ago

410 posts - 482 votes 
Speaks: English*, DutchC1
Studies: Turkish, French

 
 Message 37 of 116
18 October 2009 at 6:39pm | IP Logged 
Ik maakte een lijst van alle dingen die ik nog problemen met hebben. De lijst gaat over grammatica. Er zijn zeven punten. Dus zal ik proberen om een punt per dag te doen. Vandaag probeer ik eenvoudiger zinnen te schrijven, in plaats van lang, complex en foute zinnen.

Ik wil ook onderzoeken/verbeteren:

- preposities
- woordvolgorde
- lidwoorden
- woordenschat
- subordinatie
- het verschil tussen spreektaal en schrijftaal

Ik heb meer oefeningen op Livemocha gedaan. Ik vind de Nederlands cursus makkelijk maar de Portugees cursus is heel moeilijk voor mij. Ik kan alleen zinnen van drie woorden maken in Portugees. Ik beslissende dat ik Nederlands boeken wil voor Sinterklaas. Een boek van Nederlands werkwoorden en de Nederlands vertaling van Duitse boek Der Vorleser. Ik moet gedichten schrijven voor Sinterklaas. Ze verwachten mij om hun in het Nederlands te schrijven maar ik wil hun liever in Engels schrijven. De ouders van mijn vriend uitspraken 'seven' als 'seuven'. Ik vind het raar. Ik heb zo'n honger maar ik weet niet wat ik kan eten.

Ik keek naar Teach Yourself Swedish en de woordenschat schijnt toch niet zo moeilijk. Portugees is meer van een uitdaging, denk ik. Ik zal flirten met allebei en zie wat er gebeurt.

Correction:

Ik maakte een lijst van alle dingen waar ik nog problemen mee heb. De lijst gaat over grammatica. Er zijn zeven punten. Dus zal ik proberen om een punt per dag te doen. Vandaag probeer ik eenvoudiger zinnen te schrijven, in plaats van lange, complexe en foute zinnen.

Ik wil ook onderzoeken/verbeteren:

- preposities
- woordvolgorde
- lidwoorden
- woordenschat
- subordinatie
- het verschil tussen spreektaal en schrijftaal

Ik heb meer oefeningen op Livemocha gedaan. Ik vind de Nederlands cursus makkelijk maar de Portugees cursus is heel moeilijk voor mij. Ik kan alleen zinnen van drie woorden maken in het Portugees. Ik heb beslist dat ik Nederlands boeken wil voor Sinterklaas. Een boek van Nederlandse werkwoorden en de Nederlandse vertaling van het Duitse boek Der Vorleser. Ik moet gedichten schrijven voor Sinterklaas. Ze verwachten van mij om in het Nederlands te schrijven maar ik wil hun liever in het Engels schrijven. De ouders van mijn vriend spraken 'seven' uit als 'seuven'. Ik vind het raar. Ik heb zo'n honger maar ik weet niet wat ik kan eten.

Ik keek naar Teach Yourself Swedish en de woordenschat lijkt toch niet zo moeilijk. Portugees is meer een uitdaging, denk ik. Ik zal flirten met allebei en zien wat er gebeurt.

Edited by Iolanthe on 18 October 2009 at 7:36pm

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pookiebear79
Groupie
United States
Joined 6034 days ago

76 posts - 142 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian

 
 Message 39 of 116
19 October 2009 at 3:39am | IP Logged 
Iolanthe, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your learning progress here. It has been very interesting. The corrections are especially helping, because it is very useful for improving my intuition of the frustrating Dutch word order. I think seeing the 2 versions together really is useful to a learner, as you've said (plus it helps you to keep track of your own progress) because I could just read a text that was already perfect in word order and such, but then it wouldn't sink in as well.

Reading the 2 versions in your post, I often find myself saying "that's how I would have said it too," so I can see some of the pitfalls I fall into when trying to construct sentences, compared with how it looks when a native speaker writes it.
I actually think more materials geared toward people learning Dutch should make use of a similar technique, where the learner would have to pick which sentence is more correct and then it explains why that is right or not. Word order and little "extra" words that can't really be translated are my biggest difficulty in learning Dutch. (writing and speaking, anyway...it doesn't really affect my reading comprehension.) Sorry, I'm starting to ramble a bit, I hope this isn't too incoherent!

Also, I wanted to thank you for mentioning "Dialang," which I have never heard of before. I took the Dutch test, too. My results were literally all over the place, and I tend to think the test is a bit wonky in some of the areas. Before I go into that, a little background info: my Dutch is nowhere near as good as yours. At one time, I considered my level to be intermediate or close to intermediate, especially my reading and listening. But years of off and on (mostly off) study means I take 2 steps forward and 3 back, and Ive slipped a lot. I am often having to "reactivate" knowledge I already had, and then gain bits of new knowledge. Unfortunately I have health issues (in particular, neurological stuff that makes my brain pretty useless at times) which make constant, regular study not possible, so I end up with large spans of time where I "fall off the language learning wagon" so to speak. Which, of course, is why I don't advance very quickly. The only upside with having to review whenever I start studying again is that what I do know, I *really* know well because it has sunk in many times over, LOL.

Anyway, as for Dialang. The results I got which seemed more or less what I thought they'd be after a long absence from study were:
Listening A2, Reading B1, Writing A1 (the same result on that one as you, but you write far, far better than I can in Dutch, I can barely manage a few sentences if anyone else will read it, because of my stupid fear/shyness.) This leads me to believe that there's something off about how they evaluate the level of the writing test, because there's no way you and I are both at that level (I believe *I* probably am at A1 or maybe A2, but you are certainly at a much higher level.) I recall the writing test having a couple of questions related to writing business correspondence to the head of your firm or similar, which I don't consider a beginner/ A1 or A2 level skill, so I think perhaps the level of the test is a bit more difficult than they think.

Then, this is where I think they're totally off the charts:
I got a C2 for the vocabulary test. Why? Because they tested on things that I've covered quite often just in beginning/easy materials, and I only got one question wrong (a verb form I didn't know.) And yet, you obviously (from your writing) have a much larger active vocabulary than I. So I would say the words they test on are not a very accurate indication of a person's level, because I personally know I am nowhere near C2, I just happened to know the specific things they asked.

Same with language structure...I scored C1, but as I've already said it (specifically sentence structure) is a weak point of mine, I just must have gotten lucky that they asked things I was actually familiar with.

One thing I was apparently pretty accurate at was self assessment of my skills in each area...on one skill my level was exactly the same as expected from my self assessment (listening), on one I scored one level higher than my assessment (reading) and on one they said I overestimated by one level (in other words, I scored lower than my self assessment...that darned writing test, of course.) :P


I guess the point of all of that is to agree with you that the test is probably a bit off in some areas, and to say that even though it can be helpful in some ways for identifying one's strengths/weaknesses (I already knew writing was my weakest skill, but on the other side of things the test far overestimated my vocab and lang. structure abilities) I would take the results with a grain of salt.

You already know, I'm sure, what areas you are stronger/weaker in and need to work on before you take the NT2 test anyway. I wouldn't put too much stock in the results of one small "pre assessment." :) Besides, you have the added benefits of immersion and a native speaker who can answer your specific questions, and your course that you are taking, so I am sure you will do well when the time comes for the exam. I know it's still a while off, but good luck on it. :) (If I recall from one of your earlier posts, you needed to pass the test at a certain level to enroll in Dutch uni next year, right?)

Anyway, sorry this is nearing book length. Just wanted to say I've enjoyed reading your log and to share my experiences with that dialang test to put things in perspective.
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tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5870 days ago

979 posts - 1688 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

 
 Message 40 of 116
19 October 2009 at 4:30am | IP Logged 
pookiebear79 wrote:
I actually think more materials geared toward people learning Dutch should make use of a similar technique, where the learner would have to pick which sentence is more correct and then it explains why that is right or not. Word order and little "extra" words that can't really be translated are my biggest difficulty in learning Dutch.

I agree. Although there is a huge amount of Dutch text, audio and video available on the Internet, there isn't much of it that specifically caters to the language learner. There is very little literal parallel English-Dutch text, very little Dutch text with Dutch audio, and until recently, no Dutch-subtitled Dutch video. However, there is since June 2009 a growing amount of such video on http://www.nos.nl, although you have to search a bit to find it and have the right add-on for your browser. One good program with good subtitles on NOS is Blauw Bloed.

There is one technique that you can use to get a bit of the text technique you mentioned. Translate a Dutch site into English with Google Translate. The English will be quite understandable. Try to translate that English back into Dutch. Then hover your cursor over each English sentence to get a pop-up of the original Dutch. If you have trouble getting the pop-up to work in your browser, simply refer separately to the original Dutch page.



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