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January Dutch Challenge (EVERYONE!)

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Hobbema
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5501 days ago

541 posts - 575 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch

 
 Message 105 of 172
12 January 2011 at 8:29am | IP Logged 
Well heck, I guess I'll be the one to speak up and say that Dutch is kicking my butt, especially the grammar.

I've been through Pimsleur and Michel Thomas Foundation and Advanced as well as my other independent study stuff and I still can't understand half of what I read on rnw.nl. (Hopefully Assimil will help).

Aaargh.

Here's my impression. Dutch is hard. The word order and grammar is completely different from English and is harder and more non-intuitive than other romance languages. I cannot for the life of me make the VERBS sound natural in their correct Dutch configuration.

Thanks for letting me rant.

Hobbema




1 person has voted this message useful



thistledown
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 4924 days ago

14 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 106 of 172
12 January 2011 at 11:44am | IP Logged 
The word order is the hardest thing for me Hobbema. I make up little stories and stuff to email to my son-in-law and he says he stares at them and scratches his head and says he can see *something* wrong with the word order but can't quite put his finger on it! And he's a native Dutch speaker ....

I'm on lesson 79 of Assimil and they now introduce the concept that the word order is flexible, and that the order which has been drilled into me for 78 lessons via rote learning and repetition, is not in fact the only acceptable order - it's flexible depending on context and emphasis! NOW they tell me!!!

Michel Thomas was good for introducing me to Dutch because they use little tricks (such as the supposedly 'slow' learner) to make you feel clever. I felt as if I was cracking along nicely with MT, but realised when I started Assimil that it (Assimil) would actually take me further. I've got the Linguaphone course which I'll be starting next week and that looks like a big beast!

For what it's worth I think Dutch is easy for a native English speaker to get to a level where basic communication is possible, given a sympathetic listener. If you want to go further than that it gets harder - because things like modal adverbs are a minefield. Easy to do badly, but difficult to do well.


2 persons have voted this message useful



doviende
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
languagefixatio
Joined 5746 days ago

533 posts - 1245 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese

 
 Message 107 of 172
12 January 2011 at 12:22pm | IP Logged 
I found that with German, extensive reading gave me an excellent sense for word order...so much so, that when I write in Esperanto, I tend to use German word order. Dutch is only slightly different, so I find it mostly intuitive, but I anticipate that after more reading it'll become second-nature as well.

My experience with textbooks is that they tend to baby you on word order...they choose the simplest forms with the least variety (and wow, was this ever true for chinese). Once you jump into some real books more, you'll just get used to it over time and you won't have to think about it.
1 person has voted this message useful



polyglossia
Senior Member
FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5164 days ago

205 posts - 255 votes 
Speaks: French*

 
 Message 108 of 172
12 January 2011 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
senor_smile wrote:
I just found what looks like a daily news recording from the Netherlands with exact
subtitles of everything being said. some of the news I saw is stuff from this morning,
so it looks like it's updated often.

http://wwitv.com/tv_channels/b3217.htm


God!! i've been searching for this kind of thing since such a long time !! The most useful link I've heard of so far regarding "learning dutch" material !! thanks so much!

(too bad I cant vote twice !!:D)
1 person has voted this message useful



tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5626 days ago

979 posts - 1688 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

 
 Message 109 of 172
12 January 2011 at 2:03pm | IP Logged 
Hobbema wrote:
I've been through Pimsleur and Michel Thomas Foundation and Advanced as well as my other independent study stuff and I still can't understand half of what I read on rnw.nl. (Hopefully Assimil will help).

I learned most of my initial Dutch by studying and reading rnw.nl. So I now find it easier than the things that Pimsleur and Michel Thomas teach. I have both. It would be interesting to know the total number of unique words that appear in the courses you have been using. It is probably a small number. In your blog, I don't see a lot of activities that support vocabulary building. That may be your difficulty in reading rnw.nl.

Try reading rnw.nl with the "Globefish Language Support" tool in your browser, and make sure you understand every word.



Edited by tommus on 12 January 2011 at 3:32pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



senor_smile
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6146 days ago

110 posts - 115 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Latin, Russian

 
 Message 110 of 172
12 January 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged 
polyglossia wrote:
senor_smile wrote:
I just found what looks like a daily news recording from the Netherlands with exact
subtitles of everything being said. some of the news I saw is stuff from this morning,
so it looks like it's updated often.

http://wwitv.com/tv_channels/b3217.htm


God!! i've been searching for this kind of thing since such a long time !! The most useful link I've heard of so far regarding "learning dutch" material !! thanks so much!

(too bad I cant vote twice !!:D)


Glad it's of use to someone besides just me.

wwitv.com also has a bunch of other channels from the netherlands, and practically every other country in the world as well!
1 person has voted this message useful



noriyuki_nomura
Bilingual Octoglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 5100 days ago

304 posts - 465 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1
Studies: TurkishA1, Korean

 
 Message 111 of 172
12 January 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
Does anyone know whether there are any Dutch grammar exercise books out there in the market, where one can buy to practise their grammar? Thanks in advance for your recommendation! :)

Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 12 January 2011 at 3:58pm

1 person has voted this message useful



thistledown
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 4924 days ago

14 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 112 of 172
12 January 2011 at 4:05pm | IP Logged 
doviende wrote:
I found that with German, extensive reading gave me an excellent sense for word order...so much so, that when I write in Esperanto, I tend to use German word order. Dutch is only slightly different, so I find it mostly intuitive, but I anticipate that after more reading it'll become second-nature as well.


I am reading The Hobbit in Dutch and have Lord of the Rings on order. I'm anticipating that my Dutch will include useful phrases such as "My people have been waiting since the dawn of the world" and "with my elven-sword I come to seek revenge" which may be of limited use in the real world - unless we get bad service in a restaurant of course .....


4 persons have voted this message useful



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