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 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5360 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 1 13 April 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
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I noticed this old book, "An Irishman's difficulties with the Dutch Language" on librivox the other day, and the text is here (or google for other sites).
The book is really for dutch speakers or intermediate-advanced learners, because a lot of the examples of the misunderstandings are not translated into English or explained. Even with the help of Meneer Google, I often failed to understand the misunderstandings. The audiobook is read by a native dutch speaker, with a pleasant voice and reading manner, but who really reads the English too slowly, so I mostly just read the book myself, but it was handy for hearing the pronounciation of the dutch sentences. The book itself is 100 years old, and the joke of the story is, that he is using a grammar that is itself already outdated. However it is surprising to see how similar some of his strategies are, to those we discuss here every day. Vocab lists, and sticking labels on objects, for example. Sometimes the old fashioned language is quite pleasing ("We failed to make the Knetsch comprehend us, but communicated our needs with gesture and display of coin.") but I suspect some things don't make sense anymore, e.g. he causes much offense with the use of the word "bliksem" for "lightning", but as far as I can tell, this offensive interpretation no longer exists. There is a also a short essay called An Englishman's Difficulties with the Dutch, (possibly inspired by the earlier book) which I am sure I have seen mentioned somewhere on the forum before. I sought but I did not find. And on the subject, I can heartily recommend Me Talk Pretty One day (amazon link) about David Sedaris's experience with French and the French. Edited by schoenewaelder on 13 April 2013 at 5:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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