albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4389 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German
| Message 1 of 11 11 November 2014 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
I am curious to know if there is someone here who has learned Dutch after German , I am interested to
know what it was like . In which time frame do you think it possible to achive something like in C as far as
listening and reading are concerned if one starts off with this passive knowledge of German .
Edited by albysky on 11 November 2014 at 10:00am
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beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian
| Message 2 of 11 11 November 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
Dutch seems to be a halfway house between German and English. Someone who is native in one of these languages and strong in the other would acquire Dutch rapidly.
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 11 11 November 2014 at 11:00am | IP Logged |
Yeah, but beware the little traps. You'll understand it very quickly, but speaking it
correctly is another matter. And pronunciation is a bit tricky.
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guiguixx1 Octoglot Senior Member Belgium guillaumelp.wordpres Joined 4093 days ago 163 posts - 207 votes Speaks: French*, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Polish, Mandarin
| Message 4 of 11 11 November 2014 at 11:53am | IP Logged |
Well, I haven't studied Dutch after German, but the other way around. It's been 2 months
that I'm into German, after having a B2-C1 level in Dutch. So it's not the same thing,
but still, I think the rapidity must be quite similar. The grammar is very close, except
for the cases that I have to get used to, but for things like reading and listening,
after some practice it gets easier. I listen to German podcast almost daily, and realise
that my listening skills improve quite quickly. I can easily recognize words, but I still
lack vocabulary. It's the same for reading. Vocab is the biggest problem, since the
grammar is very close.
Although I don't study it full time (since, as an Erasmus student, I don't have that my
time for language learning), I have reached something like a A2 so far. But if I had had
more time to study, and German friends to practice with, I would probably already be at
B1
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albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4389 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German
| Message 5 of 11 11 November 2014 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
Yeah, but beware the little traps. You'll understand it very quickly, but speaking it
correctly is another matter. And pronunciation is a bit tricky. |
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speaking correctly is always another matter :-)
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Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4584 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 6 of 11 11 November 2014 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
My sister lived in Germany for a while and took a Dutch module at university. It sounded like it was a Dutch conversion course for Germans, ie. it started with the premise that you could already understand a lot and focussed on teaching the differences to German. I'm not sure what level the class got to in what timeframe, but the biggest difficulties seemed to be pronunciation and also avoiding false friends.
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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean
| Message 7 of 11 12 November 2014 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
Yeah, but beware the little traps. You'll understand it very quickly, but speaking it
correctly is another matter. And pronunciation is a bit tricky. |
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It's the same learning Portuguese when knowing Spanish. Understanding and reading come like a blitz after a short period of acclimatization. Even making yourself understood on a variety of topics can be quickly attained because you can improvise, as cognates are far more pervasive (can't do that when learning German with either English or Spanish due to the vocabulary being distant enough).
But speaking properly is a struggle. In fact it can be quite difficult for a while, because the closeness of the languages creates what I call "reflex interference": You start speaking correctly but at the first doubt you introduce an element of the closely related language, almost unwillingly, and you catch the mistake too late as you have already spoken.
Overall of course you can become proficient quickly when learning closely related languages to your own mother tongues, but perfecting them may take just as long as a more distant language.
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Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 8 of 11 12 November 2014 at 10:21am | IP Logged |
I started Dutch when I had German at A2 - However, although I found Dutch to quite
logical and natural, I found that I subconsciously mixed German into Dutch.
As a result I stopped Dutch (which is a language I want to learn, but don't need to
learn) until my German improved. I reckon I'll come back to it next year.
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