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Some advices for french and dutch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3993 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 12 16 November 2013 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi all,
The situation is the following: I'm studying Dutch, French and Icelandic (the last one not with the right effort). This is the background in the three languages: - Dutch: it's the language of the country where I live. I studied 5 disc of the Michael Thomas Dutch one year ago and I'm studying now with the Pimsleur Dutch, I'm on lesson 15. I find spoken Dutch language (in the street) nearly impossible to understand. - French: I studied French in the middleschool. I can read French books, I have a pronunciation that is understandable by natives, I cannot have conversations in French yet. I'm now studying with the Pimsleur French and I'm on the lesson 15 of the first phase. Here the problems: - it's impossible to me to study 3 languages everyday. - I find the Pimsleur method effective to start but incredibly boring, and I noticed that the lessons are the same for both Dutch and French! So when I go to work with the tram I listen the Dutch lesson and when I come back home I listen the same things in the French lesson, this destroys my interest. If the lessons are the same for every language, I will never use the Pimsleur again. - With Pimsleur I know how to conjugate a really small set of verbs only with the first two singular persons (and not even the informal you, but only the formal one!) - With Pimsleur, also, I'm focused on repeating sentences that most likely I will never use in real life. It's good to understand a little pronunciation but it because robotic... By reading the blog of Benny Lewis he claims that the best way of learning a language is to access native materials... the problem is that you need a certain level to be able to understand the material, otherwise it's completely useless (after one year I still don't have any clue of what Dutch people say, even when they use terms that I know and I'm able to use and reproduce). Said that, I can actually use native material with French, so I think I will improve my French only in this way. With Dutch I will finish the Pimsleur and maybe the Michael Thomas, but what's next? What can I use to get a decent comprehension of spoken Dutch and build vocabulary and grammar? Assimil? or what else? With Icelandic I'm using 'Colloquial Icelandic', that seems to have a steep learning curve... I heard that there is nothing better for this language. How can I use effectively this method? Thank you very much in advance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4955 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 12 16 November 2013 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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THe thing is that both Pimsleur and MT, despite all their advantages and qualities, leave you really far from the level at which you can begin using native materials. So, if you want to get there, the most comfortable and practical (and sure) way is to get a real, full course to get you to that point. No course will leave you to fluency by itself but some take you further than others.
Get something like Teach Yourself or colloquial. Or even a monolingual course for beginners and intermediates could be a good choice. Search for logs of people who already learnt Dutch, there is quite a lot of them on the forums. For French, you might like Grammaire Progressive by CLE or many other things, mentioned a thousand times in various threads already, to help you bridge the gap. Spend some time with that, learn the common grammar, get a few thousands words of vocabulary and than dive into the native materials. Than start with easier native sources. BDs are a great introduction to real French. Books of easier genres, translations. American tv series with good quality dubbing are easier than native ones as well. News in easy language, podcasts, songs, wikipedia. There are many things to choose from. But the readier you are, the more you gain from all this, in my opinion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4653 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 12 16 November 2013 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I find many languages quite hard to understand when spoken in the street, even if I know
them well. That doesn't bother me so much. However this will not improve unless you practice speaking and listening a lot. Which means I would supplement Pimsleur with something else, namely speaking. Colloquial Icelandic has a steep learning curve, but Icelandic doesn't have a lot of good materials. I got to unit 3 or 4 and that allowed me to do a fair bit, but I'd not do a unit at a time, unless I had 3 weeks off or was feeling particularly suicidal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4236 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 4 of 12 16 November 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It depends on the time available and spent. I am probably overdoing it because I have
been studying five languages a day, which is quite tiring, but it is possible. For Dutch, if you want more advanaced materials, try the NT2 for the Staatsexamen http://www.nt2.nl/onderwerpe n/nederlands_voor_beginners There is a large amount of materials, however the majority seem to cost more than €20,. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| catullus_roar Quadrilingual Octoglot Groupie Australia Joined 4514 days ago 89 posts - 184 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien*, English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Italian, Latin, Armenian, Afrikaans, Russian | Message 5 of 12 17 November 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you live in a Dutch-speaking country, make Dutch friends, get them to tutor you (if this is possible). Just invest in a dictionary, buy the newspaper, get out into the world and expose yourself to Dutch. You have all your waking hours to absorb the Dutch, so I don't think this will be a problem.
As for French, if you can pronounce and read, I think the biggest problem with conversation for you wouldn't be the 'speaking' part but the 'listening' part. Hence, French radio. http://www.franceinter.fr/ One foolproof way to improve your listening is dictation. This may sound weird, but when I was cramming for the B2 very long ago, I used http://www.ladictee.fr/contenu/Les_exercices_de_francais_gra mmaire_orthographe_conjugaison_interactifs_d_analyse.html The website has a lot of dictation, grammar exercises etc. You will benefit greatly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 12 17 November 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Almost any other kind of listening is easier than understanding natives talking to each other in the street. Long before you can do that, you should be able to understand natives talking directly to you, natives speaking in "radio announcer" voices, and even dubbed TV series. Pretty much the only thing worse than natives speaking to each other in the street is stand-up comedy. Natives speaking to each other in the street are not making any compromises. They're using their local accent and/or dialect, and they're speaking it at full speed, with lots of context left out. Find an easier goal for now. Also, I don't know what the dialect situation is with Dutch, but make sure you have listening materials for whatever variant people actually speak where you live. In my case, I couldn't correctly naturally for Quebec accents until I was well past B2, at which point it became much less of a problem.
Native materials are great, because (a) they're the raw, unfiltered language, (b) they're deliberately addicting so natives will pay money for them, and (c) there's something available for every taste. But if you can't understand them, you'll have to cheat. Find a way to make a small amount of native materials comprehensible. Your ultimate weapon here is the combination of (1) L1 text, (2) L2 text, (3) L2 audio and (4) brute repetition and/or volume. For example, get an English book, the Dutch version of the book, and the Dutch audio book, and begin by reading a paragraph in English, analyzing it in Dutch, and listening to the paragraph on loop play. Repeat for a few dozen pages. Some useful variations on this general idea are Assimil courses, Listening/Reading and subs2srs. You could also try watching TV episodes several times in Dutch, starting with English subs, switching to Dutch subs, and finally watching with no subs at all. (But this only works if the Dutch subs are mostly accurate.) Once you can more-or-less read a book, read one. Then read a bunch more. Once you can more-or-less watch a couple of episodes of a television series, watch a season. Or three. And then repeat with other series. Then go for a Super Challenge-sized amount of native material. Along the way, when things puzzle you, try to occasionally take an interest in figuring them out (but not all the time, because it kills your momentum). Your brain is mostly likely capable of adapting to a new language. But it needs some kind of "hook" which lets it understand enough of what's going on so that it can figure out more. And it needs a lot of exposure, in the range of a million words of more-or-less comprehensible input. Edited by emk on 17 November 2013 at 11:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3993 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 7 of 12 17 November 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Guys, thank you all for your advices!
@cavesa, sorry for the naive question, what are 'BDs'? @tarvos, hehe you made my day with the word 'suicidal' :D @1e4e6 and @catullus_roar, thanks for the links @emk, I find your post really inspiring. I realized that it's the way I learnt English! So I know that it works. Talking about accents and dialects, I heard that the Haagse accent is really strong and that the Haagse dialect is widely spoken even between young people... so at the end I would be happy just to being able to have conversations with people. Sorry for (once again) the naive question, but what are L1, L2 and L3? Thank you again! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 12 17 November 2013 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Bandes dessinées, or French graphic novels. The French publish thousands of these, and they're awesome—lots of conversational language with pictures, and you can find anything from fun science fiction to powerful works of literature. I plan to go buy another stack today at lunch. :-) Try SensCritique for top 10 lists and reviews, and Izneo (which geoffw discovered?) to read them online for a reasonable price. Two massively popular series are Asterix (humor) and Tintin (adventure). For something a bit more "literary", but with lots of dry humor, try Persepolis. For science fiction, check out my log.
Ah, yup, a non-standard dialect. Fun, fun. Based on my experiences with Quebec French, I know of two general ways you can attack this: 1. Find listening resources in the actual dialect. Something with a written version would be ideal. (This may require a lot of digging and a bit of clever thinking.) Do all the usual listening comprehension activities, but with the dialect people actually speak. 2. Get to a high level of listening comprehension in the standard dialect, and then try to adapt. For me, I started out watching entire seasons of one French TV series, then another, then another, and one day I could understand most of what I heard on most programs on television. That's when Quebec accents became dramatically easier, although I never really practiced them specifically. Of course, you could also do both: Use all the local dialect resources you can find, and watch lots of TV in the "standard" dialect, too. If your short-term goal is one-on-one conversations, you'll find it's a lot easier, because many people will slow down and speak clearly, sometimes without even being conscious of it.
L1 is your first language, and L2 is the language you're learning. L3 was a dumb typo on my part (which I just corrected, so go reread that bit and see if makes more sense), but it also means "A language that I'm learning using materials in my L2." So for example, when I study Assimil's L'Égyptien hiéroglypique, I'm using my L2 to study my L3. This is mostly useful if don't want your L2 to get rusty while learning a new language, but it's also useful if there are excellent courses in your L2, or if you want to avoid "linking" a new language to your L1. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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