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1 week of Dutch (L-R) | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | Dutch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Biene Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 6165 days ago 71 posts - 73 votes  2 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Dutch, Japanese | Message 1 of 20 20 June 2008 at 2:11pm | IP Logged |
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Starting today I have 10 free days ahead of me and plan to use them for an intensive L-R project on Dutch. For some time I wanted to give atagamii's L-R method an honest try and attempt to learn a language I've never learned before. With learning a language I mean here that I want to be able to understand a written text and to be able to follow a conversation at least partially. I don't intent to become fluent in Dutch in a bit over a week, which I think is impossible for me anyways.
As a native speaker of German (who understands though not speaks Platt), and being more or less fluent in English, and knowing a tad bit of French; I figured that Dutch should be the least difficult language to learn. In addition it's nettling to almost understand what Dutch people say, but only almost... and it's a funny sounding language to me. Almost like some out-of-date German crossed with a sore throat (I'm sure we sound equaly weird and probably rude to the Dutch). Oh, and I blame this whole project on Volte who unwittingly made me not only change my target-language from Swedish to Dutch but also made me use my precious holidays on language-learning with L-R. It's always nice to know whom to blame, in case something goes wrong. :) Materials: Tonke Dragt - De brief voor de koning (audiobook (ca. 17 hr), Dutch book, and German translation) Frances hodgson Burnett - De geheime tuin (audiobook (ca. 9 hr), Dutch book, and English translation) PS: I'll be adding more material later on. Edited by Biene on 20 June 2008 at 2:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jez Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6249 days ago 37 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 20 20 June 2008 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck with it. I think you'll find Dutch to be quite easy actually. Sure, the pronunciation might be a bit difficult but that's not your highest priority anyway from what I read.
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| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 5973 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 5 of 20 21 June 2008 at 5:18am | IP Logged |
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Biene,
Good luck. :) Like the others who've commented here, I'll be interested to read your 'results' of the experience. Also, I was seriously excited to check out the site for Dutch audio books, which you linked to above, because I've never heard of it.(It's one of those things I never think to search for until someone mentions it, I suppose.) They have some cool stuff! I wish they had an audio book of the Wizard of Oz in Dutch, but I'm off to try to find an e-book, at least...No success so far, just a lot of hits for an animated version. Edited by pookiebear79 on 21 June 2008 at 5:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Biene Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 6165 days ago 71 posts - 73 votes 2 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Dutch, Japanese | Message 6 of 20 21 June 2008 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for all your comments and I think I should elaborate a bit more what I'm doing etc.
No, I never learned Dutch before. It's a known fact that very few Germans (appart from the ones that live near the Dutch border) learn Dutch and that many Dutch speak very good German. :/ I'm using bound books for this project, so no parallel texts, interlinear texts, etc. I had hoped that at least "de geheime tuin" would be available as an e-text on the web, but wasn't able to find one, even though the English original can be found at Gutenberg Project. So I ordered the books and audiobooks from a bookstore in town. I gave them the ISBNs and they ordered them for me, and after 3 weeks they arrived in the store. Exept the Tuin-book which seems to be undeliverable; I ordered it now online via Libri.de and hope it'll arrive the upcomming week. All this probably sounds very complicated but it made paying much easier for me. Sorry waremchan, no I don't have an e-text of Anne Frank's Diary. Maybe you can order a bound copy through your local bookstore. I want to use the "De brief voor de koning"-material as follows: (1.) Read the German book (2.) Listen to the Dutch audiobook while (silently) reading along in the German book. (3.) Listen to the Dutch audiobook while (silently) reading along in the Dutch book. (4.) Listen to the Dutch audiobook while reading aloud (shadowing) from the Dutch book. ((5.) Translating interesting bits from the German book into Dutch, both orally and handwritten.) I've finished (1.) before I started with this project and am now in the middle of (2.). In the beginning of (2.) it was quite difficult to follow the narrator and read along in the German text, since the narrator seemed to speak quite fast and since sentense structure is not always the same in German and Dutch. Now, after 8 hours of listening to said narrator I find him a bit too slow. I find my mind starting to wander and getting distracted easily, since understanding the narrator has become quite easy. So I'll move to step (3.) even though I haven't finished step (2.) yet. Atagamii recommended to move on to step (3.) when you think that you can handle the given information, and since I'm supposed to repeat step (3.) about 3 times I think I'm safe to move on. Dutch is much more similar to German than I thought. Before this I could understand the gist of a written Dutch text when concentrating, but wasn't able to make much sense of the spoken language. Now I can close my eyes and still understand most of what is said. This is partially thanks to the narrator who speaks much clearer and slower than in a normal conversation and partially thanks to the massive input I had over the past two days. The language makes much more sense and sounds much more pleasant than at the beginning, even though I'm now sometimes thinking it sounds a bit like Swiss-German. I mean the intonation, the singing of what is said. Highgerman is quite flat and boring while southern dialects and accents have a tendency to sound more melodic...and so does Dutch sound to me. I wonder what language it'll remind me next...Welsh? As for how easy Dutch is for a German-native vs. an English-native speaker. Well I think its much closer to German than to English or French. I'd say it's about 2/3 German with 1/6 English and French and 1/6 of pure Dutch. German means here that either the words are the same or that they share the same root, or evolved from each other. And now some questions that I have: a) What accents do the narrators have? The woman speaks much faster than the man, but she also seems to pronounce the "ch" much harsher than he does. I'm just curious if they have a noticable regional accent or if they are using "Highdutch"; if something like that exists. b) When a German speaks Dutch, what pronunciation-pitfalls should one watch out for? When Dutch speak German they are easily recognizable by their "ch", they pronounce it more and different than we do. Pronunciation is not my highest priority here but I still want to get it right. c) The Dutch "ch"-sound from "genade" or "God" sounds as if it's pronounced more in the back of the throat. In the German "ch" as in "ich" there is no contact between tongue and uvular. When I try to immitate that Dutch-"ch" sound the uvular part of the throat gets in friction and gets in contact with the backpart of the tongue... is that how it should be? Total time: 8h PS: When I feel really brave I'll post a short audio-clip at the end of the week and you can tell me how bad my accent is. ;) Edited by Biene on 21 June 2008 at 1:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 5973 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 8 of 20 21 June 2008 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
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I've don't know the about the accents in the book you're listening to specifically,and I'm certainly no expert, but I think I may be able to shed a tiny amount of light on part a of your question. Most of my instructional materials for Dutch also contain 2 different speakers who pronounce slightly different. At least one book (It may have been 'Colloquial Dutch' but I can't be sure) says the difference is indeed regional, whereby people in the North of the Netherlands speak the g/ch more guttural, while the sound becomes 'softer the further south you go.'
(I do know there's a bit of a cultural thing involved too(a bit of teasing by one group, over the way the other speaks, that goes along with that) but not being from the Netherlands I feel it is not my right or place to make any comment or generalization about that.) :) Also, regarding part b of your question, I've read comments by several Dutch people who say the ch sound (in particular the sch sound) is 'impossible' for English or German speakers to ever say correctly. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration to call it impossible, but it will definitely make it obvious that you are a native German speaker if you pronounce an initial 'sch' sound in an 'sh' sound like German. (I guess the belief that it is 'impossible' goes back to historical (wartime) contexts in which this was used as a test to find German people trying to pass as Dutch. I'm sure most people who have even dabbled in Dutch language or history have already heard this, so I won't elaborate.) Again, like I said I'm certainly no expert. For more detailed/perfectly 100% accurate info you'll obviously want a native speaker of Dutch. But as I've studied Dutch history, culture (and when I can, the language) for many years I thought I could help out a little with your questions. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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