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A Padawan learns Dutch/Ind./Fr. - TAC ’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 329 of 568 11 October 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Having gone the other way, my impressions will be slightly different, but here's how my experience has gone. Knowing German well made it extremely easy to get up an running with semi-comprehensible written input in Dutch (given that I put a lot of time into the project because it was mostly quite fun). First, I went through the book "Dutch in 3 months" in about a week or two. I previously had used "Teach Yourself Dutch" years ago but hadn't really learned or remembered anything. Then I ordered Harry Potter book 3 (it was the cheapest one I could find used at amazon--now you can get them online from the pottermore shop for cheap, both NL and DE). While waiting for it to arrive, I started reading the wikipedia Dutch entries about the book, copying and pasting whole sections into google translate to make a rudimentary parallel text. This helped me to quickly learn the most common peculiar vocabulary I would need, like "wizard," "magic wand," "muggle" and the like. Then I just started reading the book, looking up certain words at times, but mostly just reading, whether I understood or not. After a couple hundred pages, I was reading comfortably, with maybe 95%+ vocab coverage. I then moved on to more Harry Potter and listening to audiobooks of Jules Verne, sometimes while reading along with the kindle version (I understood very little for a long time, but I think this helped). In a couple months, tops, I felt comfortable making the leap to books I hadn't read before, and kept reading. I started listening to streaming Radio 1 NL and BNR Nieuwsradio over the internet. It was only after a very long period of time (1.5+ years?) that I even tried speaking, however, and that's still tough, but gets easier quickly. I think if I committed to actually using my Assimil Dutch course as directed, I'd be speaking very comfortably in a few months. One caveat: Dutch grammar is greatly simplified compared to German grammar (partly due to very recent changes in the official Dutch language standard, from what I hear). I can't tell how much harder it would be going the other way. Another caveat: Dutch lies between English and German on a hypothetical dialect continuum. I can't say if it's harder trying to move further away from BOTH of the languages you know than to learn something in between them. I suspect it might be. All in all, I expect that solid grasp of Dutch should at worst give you a deep discount on the amount of time it will take to learn German, and your previous experience of learning a language to a high level will make your subsequent attempts easier, more efficient and less intimidating. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 330 of 568 11 October 2013 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, I forgot to even address this concern. But yeah, agreed. The worst likely problem is if you're trying to speak and you aren't solid enough on the German you may have a Dutch word spring to mind and you'll not be sure if it's valid or not. But that's better than having no word available to try, isn't it? I wouldn't expect any negative effect on your Dutch at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 331 of 568 11 October 2013 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, and the orthography of German is actually somewhat easier. But the big problem is that noun and adjective declensions (and more like article declensions) are still in full swing in German. Most Dutch people do not have trouble with German grammar, they will retain an accent in pronunciation (but the Germans like this accent because it is usually more a sentence melody thing than any gross errors when it comes to sounds). What you will have to get used to is learning the gender of each word and using the declension correctly - when it comes to everything else, it's more or less the same grammar, with some details when you get further into it (the future tense works a bit differently and eventually you have to use a subjunctive, which Dutch has more or less abolished).
It isn't that much harder. The grammar is a bigger obstacle. Many, many Dutch people learn English before they learn German, moving away from those two tongues, and they do just fine. Dutch people tend to understand German well but have problems with the grammar, because cases are something we are taught but do not use ourselves instinctively. The rest tends to be fine, for those of us that know German. And even people who have poor production when it comes to German are bound to understand utterings in it and recognise it as German. Edited by tarvos on 11 October 2013 at 6:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 332 of 568 11 October 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Technically, two "subjunctives," but this distinction is actually not a big deal. And I don't think that the grammar issues provide much/any difficulty in *understanding* German. They just make it harder to produce grammatically correct German actively. And FWIW, I don't think I've ever had someone not understand me because of a gender/ending mistake, even if it sounded really grating to the trained ear. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 333 of 568 11 October 2013 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
There are two, but I never use one of them and the other one is pretty rare in speech (and I don't do much writin'). I agree with the rest, and I make gender mistakes all the time :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 334 of 568 13 October 2013 at 3:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Tarvos - Haha, thanks. It can be challenging to truly feel confident about one's level.
Geoffw - Whoa, thanks so much for the extremely helpful and informative post. Interesting that one of your first moves was to expose yourself to as much input as possible whether you understood it or not. I know there's a thread about comprehensible vs. noncomprehensible input going on right now. How would you rate your speaking abilities in Dutch right now? I see your location says you're in the United States, so there's probably no immediate need, but I'm still curious as to how far your abilities there go. I have also wondered if it'll be harder moving "away" from Dutch and English toward German. My suspicion is that the grammar will be a substantial challenge, but there will still be a huge vocabulary discount. In any case, German would be a long ways off for me. Dutch Today I watched two episodes of De Wandeling: one with Wouter Duinisveld, this athlete, and one titled 'Als je geen moeder mag zijn'. This calls for a Super Challenge update: Films: 82 Books: 8 "Books": 21 As before - okay it's obvious the books aren't gonna make it, but the films part should be quite manageable to do by December 31. I might keep keeping track of the books for myself next year. It'd still be cool to read 10,000 pages in Dutch. I also got De ontdekking van de hemel in the mail a couple days ago. I was so happy, I thought I might cry. On page 68 of De aanslag. Indonesian Today I went Indonesian music searching! I figured that I'd start with Yuna, since I already like her music style. Best findings from today: Yuna - Terukir Di Bintang Yuna - Penakut Technically these are in Malay, but, again, the languages are supposed to be like super close. From what I can tell reading the lyrics and listening along, they're at least pronounced very similarly. I think it's always helpful to find music in a new language - it really gives the language a "use" outside of Assimil dialogues and such. I totally love how the language sounds here, so light and airy and with such beautiful round vowels. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 335 of 568 13 October 2013 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||
I must have missed that thread; sounds like something I'd be interested in. At any rate, my written input was always at least somewhat comprehensible from the start. The fact that the audio input was basically incomprehensible thus meant that I was unable to map the sounds I heard to the phonemes as they would be written. Extensive listening is at least good for familiarizing yourself with the accents and sounds generally, though I make no claims as to how effective it is timewise. The issue for me was that it was just really easy to do, and anything you do is better than nothing. For speaking, I've really only had maybe 2 or 3 attempts at speaking Dutch in a conversation ever. I think I'm at least around the A1 level, and I could easily imagine saying A2ish, but I don't really know at all. It's extremely uneven, since I'd put my reading at a confident B2, and my listening at either B1 or B2, so obviously I have very strong familiarity with the language. I just don't have the neural pathways mapped out to take that knowledge and deliver it to my mouth. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 336 of 568 13 October 2013 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is the thread I was thinking of:
Processable and non-processable materials But yeah, okay, I see. And I agree, extensive listening can be extremely useful. I feel like it helps the quality of my output too, sort of just getting to know what sounds right and what doesn't. And yeah, I'm sure that if you ever had the need or want to speak more, your active abilities would catch up very quickly. B2 reading is already very impressive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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