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Icelandic and Dutch at the same time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6905 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes  5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 9 of 29 30 October 2013 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Tristano, I think a lot depends on how you respond to interferences.
Personally, I find Icelandic different enough from Dutch or even Swedish to avoid strong interferences. Both Icelandic grammar and vocabulary are very different from what you have in Dutch or in Swedish, so you can quite easily avoid any direct transfer from one language to the other one. Most of my experience is with Old Icelandic, though, and this experience is very limited anyway. In any case, I don't think Icelandic and Swedish interferred with each other in any significant way in my case, so Dutch shouldn't either (I will be able to share more experience in a few months). On the other hand, I do experience interference problems in the Dutch-Swedish language pair. That's mostly due to to the fact I am a beginner in both languages (somewhere about A1-A2 level in both, probably). Interestingly enough, I also had problems with Swedish-French interference last year, only because I focused on both languages at the same time (but it was only vocabulary that posed problems here). Learning one language up to a high level of fluency before starting/focusing on the other one is a safer solution (I don't have problems with Dutch-German interference but I did learn to speak German fluently before I even started dabbling in Dutch). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 29 30 October 2013 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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OK, you are in the Netherlands now and learning Dutch - that should go smoothly (if you don't fall into the trap of relying on the excellent English of most Dutchmen). The big problem with Icelandic is not that it has a morphology at the level of German (but not worse than that) and a tendency to avoid English loanwords, but the simple fact that you have to fight for any kind of exposure to this language. It will be very easy to 'forget' your daily dose of Icelandic and concentrate on the language spoken all around you. The positive side of this is that you only will have this exposure deficit with one of your target languages.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 11 of 29 30 October 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want some fun material, I can recommend the Icelandic comedy series "The Night
Shift" (Naeturvaktin), which was a cult success when shown on BBC TV a year or two ago. I notice there were a couple of follow up series ("The Day Shift" and "The Prison Shift", which I haven't seen). Sadly, the price on UK Amazon is fairly horrendous at the moment. Hopefully you could find it somewhere cheaper, borrow it from a library, or whatever. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4049 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 12 of 29 31 October 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you @mongmorency! I will look for them!
@Iversen, yes indeed I relied on their very good English to improve mine first :) And yes in consideration of the fact that Dutch is around me that it's really difficult to be constant in Icelandic while it's not in Dutch. @julie, unfortunately time it's against me if I don't study Icelandic as well (and it appears to be a language that requires a lot of time) because I will have only one chance to speak with natives on site, for not more than 10 days... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 13 of 29 01 November 2013 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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All languages require time... whereabouts are you in the Netherlands anyways? Go into
some villages where they speak terrible English and just speak Dutch :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4049 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 14 of 29 02 November 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm in The Hague, city that has more expats than natives. There are not natives that don't
know English here: even 80 years old people and kids do it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4705 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 15 of 29 02 November 2013 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||
It almost doesn't matter. Just explain to them that you are learning Dutch and only want to speak that with them. Then stick to that. They may not understand why you're doing it, but generally people are very respectful of a request like that. Honestly, you just need to be firm about it. Yes, they can all speak English. But they will also almost all speak Dutch to you if you ask. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 16 of 29 02 November 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
I live like 10 km from the Hague. Come into town where I live, you'll find it much harder to use English only already. It suffices to ask or to speak Dutch and be insistent. Most people who learn Dutch simply don't give up when someone shoots them down, Dutch people think they are actually helping you by speaking English (they see you struggle so they want to make communication as easy as possible, and given they own English more than any other foreign language that's what they'll speak - but if they can speak yours they'll do that usually). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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