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Dutch: The final frontier - TAC 11 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5510 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 25 of 40 21 March 2011 at 8:45am | IP Logged |
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Je heeft een blog! Wat leuk! Ik zal hij moeten lezen. Hoe gaat alles in Nederland?
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| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5585 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 26 of 40 16 May 2011 at 11:38am | IP Logged |
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It's been ages! @Vos, het gaat goed met mij. Ik wens alleen maar dat het mooi weer van de laatste maand terug zou komen. Het is donker en grijs vandaag :( Hoe is het met jou?
I'm back armed with something to write about (finally!). I've been practicing my speaking with my bf. We pick a topic every day and talk about it for half an hour to an hour. I've never made such a concentrated effort to improve my speaking before so this is great! I've actually found myself speaking without thinking whilst talking or whilst making up an imaginary conversation in my head. My level of fluency ranges from those brilliant moments of unconscious speaking to um-ing because I can't find the right Dutch word. I plan on um-ing my way to fluency. One fear I have is that my Dutch will get frozen with all the mistakes I'm making currently. I'm sometimes conscious of them but it's not just little mistakes but the way you express things that make you stand out as a learner (and accent of course but I'm not going to deal with that just yet lol). I get the feeling my bf is being a bit lax about correcting me. I don't know how this works, if letting my brain talk without me formulating it first is going to lead to sloppy speaking in the future or not. Earlier I had another fear about fluency, that I would lose my English as if there was only limited space on my hard drive. But now I see it like this: 
I've still been reading but not as intensively as during the first months of the year and tadoku. Over and out! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5585 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 27 of 40 06 June 2011 at 10:28pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've been having speaking 'lessons' with my boyfriend for the last month or so now. We're running out of topics I'm afraid but I'm feeling a lot more confident about speaking Dutch in every day situations. In fact, I don't hesitate to do it at all now. In the past I'd always make up my mind about whether I was going to speak English or Dutch based on how shy I was feeling but now I feel like I can communicate fine in Dutch. When I'm having a conversation though, it totally depends on the topic. If it's something that I have a lot to say about I can speak fluently but if it's something I only know a little about I'm constantly umm-ing and asking for specialist vocabulary ('hoe heet barbed wire in het Nederlands?' and etc).That's happening more and more now we're running out of things to talk about.
Perhaps it's time to start forcing myself to speak Dutch with his family. Believe it or not I feel a lot more comfortable and natural speaking Dutch to my boyfriend who's completely fluent in English now we've been practising than talking to his family who insist on speaking to me in Dutch. So we're still having bilingual conversations. It feels silly. I know I should speak Dutch to them but I never remember until after I start talking and so I still get my 'father-in-law' telling me to 'spreek Nederlands' and saying stuff like 'we hebben geen "plates" in het Nederlands, ze heten boordjes'. Yeah, yeah I get it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5510 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 28 of 40 07 June 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged |
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I think you should most definitely start forcing yourself to speak Dutch with his family. What a great opportunity
it is to use and practice the language! Also undoubtedly afterwards I'm sure you'll be feeling even more confident and the effect will just grow and grow until speaking Nederlands is simply the normal thing to do. I've been speaking more Spanish with my housemate and I've noticed the same thing. I'm always really nervous and unsure of myself at the beginning, but after we've been talking for a bit my mind slowly turns more and more to Spanish mode, and after a quick chat of say 10 or 15 minutes, my confidence in speaking the language is always much better. Of course it does go back down again until the next positive experience, but the more frequently that these occur, the stronger my confidence will be. As will yours. So take the step! I know nerves are a big deal, as I'm a rather nervous/shy person in general also. But what a fantastic opportunity you have. Definitely make the most it. And I'm sure you're probably a perfectionist as well, so your knowledge in het Nederlands and speaking it is probably much higher than you give yourself credit for. Good luck with it Iolanthe! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5585 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 29 of 40 28 June 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
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The whole speaking Dutch in the home idea has fallen to the wayside again. It's just so difficult to change my default. I have the feeling that Dutch will become my 'career language' at some point and in 5 years from now, speaking will not longer be an issue.
If all goes well in September I should be starting a degree in Dutch (as a second language). I'm looking forward to this because finally I'm going to study something that fits so well into my life. I still get the urge to start studying another language but I've made the decision not to even attempt it until after my 3rd Dutchiversary (May next year). As a technique for speaking better, I'm trying to accept the fact that when I speak Dutch there's little chance that I'm going to come across as a competent and confident person. My learning techniques are as much about overcoming psychological hurdles as actually learning the language now and Dutch is more of a pragmatic issue than an intellectual pursuit as I struggle to feel at home in this country and build a future here. I don't have much to post here because of this reason. Maybe once I start actually studying again I'll have more to talk about. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5585 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 31 of 40 02 September 2011 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
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Kuikentje, ik ben nu gewend aan veel aspecten van Nederland zoals de eten, tv en dagelijkse leven maar ik voel me niet echt een met de Nederlanders. Ik heb onlangs voor het eerst in twee jaar Engeland bezocht en daar voelde ik me vrijer en meer thuis daar dan in Nederland.
Vandaag was de introductiedag van Dutch Studies (aka Nederlandkunde). Volgende week moet ik een examen doen om te zien waar mijn niveau ligt en welke vakken ik ga nemen. Spannend! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5279 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 32 of 40 02 September 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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Hoi Iolanthe, heel veel succes met je nieuwe studie! Doe je nog steeds Spaans of ben je
helemaal overgestapt op het Nederlands? Wat vervelend om te horen dat je je niet echt thuis voelt in Nederland. Ik heb ook gehoord dat het heel moeilijk is om Nederlandse vriendenkringen te infiltreren maar ik dacht dat het voor jou misschien makkelijker was omdat je vriend Nederlands is. Waar kom je eigenlijk oorspronkelijk vandaan? Er zaten trouwens twee kleine foutjes in je post; het eten in de eerste zin en in de tweede zin is een van de daar's overbodig. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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