How much Dutch do I need to learn?

March 4, 2009 9:14 AM

How much Dutch do I need to learn if my goal is to be able to read Donald Duck comic scans online ? More details and sample pages inside.

Assume that I have a good mastery of the English language. How long would it take for me to learn enough Dutch in order to be able to read the following sample Donald Duck scans ?

Sample 1

Sample 2

Basically, how much effort do I have to invest into this endeavour, and what's the proficiency level equivalent to Dutch schooling that I need to achieve (e.g. elementary school, high school, etc.) ?

Note that I only want to learn enough to be able to read the comics, not speak the language.

Thanks for replying :)

posted by joewandy to writing & language (9 comments total)

Also, I'm a native Indonesian speaker, will it help in any way ? From wikipedia:

After independence, Dutch was dropped as an official language and replaced by Malay. Yet the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch, both in words for everyday life, and as well in scientific or technological terminology.[32] One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words.[33]

Unfortunately I have no idea what those 20% of Indonesian words are.
posted by joewandy at 9:20 AM on March 4

Reading is one thing, and understanding it is another. Probably any Dutch 3rd or 4th grader could read those strips out loud. But to fully get the humor, there might be concepts in there that go past elementary education. How long would it take you to get there? Depends how fast you can learn.
posted by beagle at 9:37 AM on March 4

Well, my Dutch isn't great. By that I mean that I can get by, I can hold basic conversations to a certain extent, but nothing too tricky. I can read both those strips and understand them.

I learnt Dutch by getting a learn Dutch book and reading Dutch subtitles on TV. I was in Holland at the time, but, unlike many places, that doesn't necessarily help with learning the language as everybody wants to speak to you in English.

So, I would think that if you got a learn Dutch book and worked your way through it (and probably not all of it if you only want to do this) you should definitely be able to read these strips.
posted by ob at 10:01 AM on March 4

I've spent about four month in the Netherlands and my Dutch isn't too bad considering.
I can read menus and understand technical stuff, but open ended and abstract stuff is a complete mystery to me. I can't read a newspaper, for example, because the subject could be anything.

I looked at the comics and they're completely impenetrable. Since a comic book could also be on any subject I think you'll have to know quite a bit of Dutch to sucessfully read them.

That being said, Dutch is pretty easy to learn so good luck.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 11:31 AM on March 4

Dutch is actually pretty close to German, closer to German than to English. blijven = bleiben, verkoop = verkauf, ik ook = ich auch, etc.

For the samples you have, grammar is likely to be pretty easy. You might look for a dictionary that's comprehensive enough to have more colloquial or slang expressions in it.

From my exposure to Indonesian, I don't think Dutch loan words into Indonesian are likely to help much.

(To Uncle Scrooge, relaxing means swimming in money and spending lots of time with his lucky dubbeltje = coin or "dime".)
posted by gimonca at 12:22 PM on March 4

Dutch is easy if you have English (especially reading) and those particular comics don't look hard. Unfortunately, though, comic strips (I've found) can be among the hardest things to understand, as they use so many idioms, weird contractions in phrasing and tend to use language that depends a lot on stress and emotion - easy to pick up if you're a native speaker and not too hard to pick up in conversation even if you're not - but tough to follow just by reading. I'm speaking as a non-native English speaker.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 2:16 PM on March 4

I'm curious: what exactly is it what you want to do? Just read comic strips? Only Donald Duck? How many? And why?

To answer your question, judging by the vocabulary I'd say below high/secondary school, probably mid-to-late elementary. I'd hazard a guess that, say, an 8-year old would be able to read the strips and follow the story, and maybe a 12-year old would better grasp the finer points of the language. Don't be fooled, expressions such as "in iemands vaarwater zitten" or words like "luieren" and "sportief", while hardly esoteric, probably aren't among the first 1000 Dutch words you'll learn.

So, in summary, I would say it depends greatly on the nature and scope of your goal.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:46 AM on March 5

what exactly is it what you want to do? Just read comic strips?

Well, reading comic strips is my only goal.

Only Donald Duck? How many?

Yeah, only donald duck. This is because :
- it's not sold in the country i'm working at now (Singapore)
- Shipping the Indonesian weekly issue proves almost impossible to arrange. Getting the english version from Amazon would would cost me an arm and a leg for shipping.
- I've probably read all the english scans of donald duck strips from various groups available online so far.
- For some strange reason, a lot of other duck material scans available online (that I can't read ) are in Dutch. Seems that it's a lot more popular there ??

And why?

because i love donald duck (it's entertaining) ^___^
posted by joewandy at 9:07 PM on March 8

Also, no Donald Duck pocket books in English ...
posted by joewandy at 9:27 PM on March 8