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Some advices for french and dutch

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12 messages over 2 pages: 1
tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 9 of 12
17 November 2013 at 12:46pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
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.


Materials to learn Haags don't exist, or if they do, they're thin on the ground
(and you would know about it here because I live close to the Hague). And as far as
dialects go, that one has better mutual intelligibility with standard Dutch than, say,
Limburgs does. The best thing to do is just to have materials for standard Dutch, the
Hague is a melting pot and not everyone on the street there speaks Haags (but when they
do, it's hilarious). Haags is a dialect that is intelligible if you speak standard
Dutch (just remember that all instances of g/ch are pronounced uvularly, at the back of
your throat, and that vowels change somewhat - but vowels always change in Dutch
dialects).

The dialect situation in the Netherlands is a gigantic mess, and only in the last 30-40
years has it evened out somewhat. The old generations of people (say over 60) will
still speak Dutch in their home dialect unless they were professors or something. They
may find it tough to speak standard Dutch, although for outsiders they'll water down
the dialect somewhat.

In the area of 20-50 the differences can be marked and depend on the speaker, but
usually here the dialect and the language exist side by side. My family all speak
dialect but they can produce a good watered-down version intelligible to anyone - it's
just that the accent can be traced to their locale of origin (within 5-10 km if you
listen closely).

Younger generations have accents but speak less dialectically.

If you are in Belgium, only category 1 and 2 apply. And Belgian Dutch has a standard
accent. Which is cute.


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tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 3993 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 10 of 12
17 November 2013 at 12:49pm | IP Logged 
emk, once again thank you for your very valuable advices! I have to re-design my language
learning plans :) Regarding to language linking, I have to say that English (L2) is linked
to Italian (my L1), while I'm linking Dutch and Icelandic to English and about French,
that was linked to Italian, I'm relinking it to English. As results, it happens sometimes
that I start speaking in English when I'm supposed to speak in Italian and sometimes some
Dutch or French word are pronounced when I'm supposed to speak in English, but not when
I'm supposed to speak in Italian. I think that for multiple language learners that is a
massive experience, can become a problem in a certain time? One Romenian guy that works
with me speaks every day in 4 different languages and he's supposed to learn other two and
told me that sometimes he doesn't even realize in which language is talking and starts
speaking with the wrong language several times.
1 person has 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 11 of 12
17 November 2013 at 12:56pm | IP Logged 
As someone who has had to switch during 5-6 languages in one evening, I can tell you
that it's no picnic, but perfectly doable - and the trick is to cut off the linking
process in your head.
Once I get to a certain level where I can produce phrases
automatically in my brain I stop translating/overthinking and then the switching takes
one or two minutes, but I can keep it going - although sometimes due to focus issues
this can lead to a few unnecessary mistakes (but that's nothing I'd worry about).

I've even done this experiment as an
i
Talki Marathon
.

Those issues sort themselves out once you get good at a few of them. I think the trick
really is to take them one by one, or at least two by two with one focused sharply,
because I study multilingually too but I always have one language that dominates my
focus over other ones. Once you get good at one of them it will become easier to
switch.

I have found that Russian-Romanian switching did not work over the summer, but it's
better now (still not easy, and the switch from Russian to Romanian is harder than vice
versa.)

Edited by tarvos on 17 November 2013 at 12:57pm

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tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 3993 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 12 of 12
19 November 2013 at 12:18am | IP Logged 
Hi @tarvos, thank you very much for your answers! Very interesting the parts of dialects,
I didn't think that the situation was so messed up! Also for what concern language
switching!


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