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Fluent Dutch in 2 months! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5624 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 28 07 April 2011 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Day two!
I'll give a more detailed update at the end of my first week, on the blog, but I thought this was worth mentioning: I spent the last hour only talking in Dutch! It's a major milestone quicker than I was expecting... and in the last environment I was expecting! Basically, I am reviewing "Rosetta Stone" for the blog (I e-mailed them and they shipped me a free copy of Dutch Levels 1,2&3 - ah the perks of running a high trafficked blog!!). After using it for 2 hours, I currently have a text document open with a pretty long list of reasons why I think it's crap, including the fact that it registered a sneeze as a correct answer for a word in its voice recognition. However, one feature I wasn't aware of is that it includes unlimited private video tutorials from a native. "Unlimited" although they follow a fixed structure based on your lessons, so you'd end up talking about the same vocabulary or grammar points based on whatever lesson it's attached to. Anyway I tried it out and varied the conversation a wee bit (Why yes, that IS a black dog, and how pretty she is! Do you think her owner knows that she is outside all by herself?) Since she was getting paid to, she indulged me for that hour. :) German definitely helped. When she corrected me, it was actually to replace a German pronunciation with an English one on occasional words, or because I kept forgetting to make my 'g' guttural. As any good teacher she was very encouraging - this is precisely the push I needed and now that I have gotten over that first conversation, I'll be ready to hit people with my Dutch who *aren't* getting paid to put up with me :P 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5624 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 28 20 April 2011 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Been a few weeks since I updated this!
If you're curious to hear how the first week went here is a detailed account. The second week also went well (I wrote about it in detail in the email list associated with my blog), but I'm having a major problem simply making good friends here. Despite what I was told, the Dutch DO enthusiastically listen to me speak their language and nobody in 2.5 weeks has ever forced English on me. However, the culture here is different to what I'm used to and it seems people aren't so open to making new friends, or perhaps something I'm doing isn't resonating with the culture. I wrote about this on the blog yesterday; I'm hoping to find a solution. My Dutch is pretty good, but I'll need consistent exposure and practice every day with natives as soon as possible if I'm to progress fast enough to be fluent by the deadline. Finding these opportunities and convincing the Dutch to squeeze me into their religiously followed diaries of appointments will be my major challenge in this mission. Now, if you're curious about how my Dutch currently sounds, I made this quick video tour of my flat. Enjoy! :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJr21Y6c1c Edited by irishpolyglot on 20 April 2011 at 9:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5551 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 19 of 28 20 April 2011 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the update. Maybe Amsterdamers are a bit bored with all the tourists they get. Try pretending you're staying longer. If you're acting a bit crazy, they probably think you're just there for the drugs. Maybe they're just uncomfortable speaking Dutch, as they really spend all their time speaking English and are probably a bit rusty. As you're avoiding speaking English, maybe they think you're a [insert non-English speaking nationality] prostitute.
Why not try making up a whole new persona which might give you a chance to practice a whole new range of vocabulary? You know, spy, pilot, etc. edit: deleted comment about not being able to read blog because of colour scheme. Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 April 2011 at 7:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 20 of 28 20 April 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
2 very interesting observations. How about volunteering in situations where people have no choice but to interact with you, perhaps even in old folks home (accompanying someone else perhaps)? There are sometimes card tournaments anyone can join. When I went to Japan, I asked friends or people who offered to be my guides to bring along other friends. This quickly allowed me to multiply the number of people I interacted with. This could also allow some people who may have been wary to meet you to now feel more comfortable as they will not be alone with you. Everyone wins. Edited by Arekkusu on 20 April 2011 at 5:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5624 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 28 20 April 2011 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another update: I will be spending the next 3 days only speaking in German (I invited a friend to visit me for the Easter break).
While this may seem like a crazy thing to do for the purposes of this mission, I actually feel it's quite important. I do not want Dutch to simply replace German in my head, and I'm relying a lot on the similarities between the languages so there is a danger of this. Speaking so much German in this early stage will help me compartmentalise the two languages in my head and be able to ultimately switch between them effortlessly. I did something similar with all of my romance languages as I was learning and maintaining them. @schonewaelder I'm not sure what kind of screen you're reading it on, but I've programmed the blog to have a much simpler presentation on mobile devices. Let me know what you're on and I'll check it out; I'll be doing a major site redesign soon anyway. Um, do you really think I could pass off as a prostitute? You do realise I'm a guy, right?? I don't think I'm acting "crazy" enough to be considered high, but I'm certainly continuing to use my usual body language and composure as I would in Latin countries. I'll likely have to tone this down to synchronise more with their reserved way of talking. @Arekkusu Thanks for the tip! From next week I'll certainly be getting more active in attempting to interact with the Dutch :) One excellent suggestion someone gave me was speed-dating haha 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5551 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 22 of 28 20 April 2011 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||
You're in Amsterdam. You can charge extra. I've just realised the black screen only occurs with Opera. It's fine with Google. False alarm. Sorry. (I'm just using a small laptop). Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 April 2011 at 7:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5526 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 23 of 28 21 April 2011 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||
I've noticed this exact same behavior (as I use Opera almost exclusively for web browsing) on that site. The black bar that is presumably supposed to be at the very bottom on his blog seems to appear farther up the page in Opera and thus nearly half of the blog post is written over it. As a workaround I've just been click-dragging across the text to highlight it (as if I were going to copy it to the clipboard) which makes it readable enough. It's not just one platform either, as Opera for Windows and Opera for Linux both render the page identically. Oddly enough, it's the only blog I visit that has any sort of visual glitch in Opera. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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