Ik spreek geen Nederlands
January 26, 2012 12:06 AM   Subscribe

Best/smoothest way of learning Dutch (hopefully online)?

This is mildly related to my last question, but I felt the need to ask for more resources:

I've been living in the Netherlands with a native speaker for about an year now, yet I still haven't managed to learn ANYTHING of the language. To the point that I am barely capable of reading any written material, and even worse at speaking (that is to say, I know about 20-25 words in Dutch, at best). This happened mostly because everyone speaks English (better or worse it's still mostly understandable) and since I am fluent in English, I haven't actually NEEDED to know Dutch. Obviously this gets in the way of me finding a job and actually having a life here.

The problem is that I reside in a rather remote area (this town has less than four thousand inhabitants) and don't have a driving license, so that travelling back and forth every day to attend an intensive course would be far too expensive, hence my question:

What is the best way of learning Dutch through the internet? Hopefully something like an intensive course with online classes would be awesome, though I'm not sure if anything like that exists (I've searched and didn't have much luck).

(I did look at a couple websites and although some of them had plenty of info, I felt like I was not learning anything while reading through them.)
posted by Trexsock to Writing & Language (22 answers total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
The standard "Dutch as a second language" course in the Netherlands is called NT2. The LOI has a distance course for this. They are one of the largest distance educators in the Netherlands.
posted by davar at 12:38 AM on January 26, 2012


The michel thomas method tapes are very good ... and can be bought from Amazon.
posted by jannw at 1:10 AM on January 26, 2012


Hi. I live in The Netherlands as a native English speaker, too. Luckily, my work arranged for me to take a course in town. On top of that, though, because I didn't study as hard as I could, I've felt the need to supplement with asking native-Dutch colleagues to teach me words here & there, but also, more to your point, listening to podcasts. I've liked Laura Speaks Dutch which won't really help your reading if you just listen, but it has text on the site as well. Several of my Anglophone friends have hired tutors. You can probably find an informal arrangement in your town with somebody friendly & patient. Memail if you want to chat more. Succes!
posted by knile at 1:37 AM on January 26, 2012


Force your partner to speak Dutch to you and respond back in Dutch. Watch Dutch movies and Dutch TV series. Read the Dutch papers and Dutch websites instead of the English ones. Try to avoid English media as much as possible. No training course is better than total immersion.
posted by Akke at 1:54 AM on January 26, 2012 [7 favorites]


Seconding the Michel Thomas audio course. Studied Japanese for 15 minutes half an hour per day, went to Japan, by then speaking and understanding rudimentary Japanese well enough to actually surprise the locals.

The Michel Thomas method is not overly rule-based or plodding, as language courses often are. It's intuitive and mysterious and interesting, and fun enough to keep you at studying. (Not overly giddy tough, which is good.) And it sticks. Really.
posted by krilli at 2:14 AM on January 26, 2012


I have experience with the Michel Thomas Method Dutch - which I found quite good when I arrived in the Netherlands. The Foundation Course can be done in about a week (1 hour a day).

Alternatively you could look into those Rosetta stone home learning systems. - I've not used these but was thinking about trying one for Japanese or Chinese this year.
posted by mary8nne at 2:56 AM on January 26, 2012


Rosetta Stone's Dutch program is good for learning to read and write Dutch, but the voice recognition function is not good. I've never seen it even acknowledge that a native speaker pronounced a word correctly.

Anki is a free flashcard program that you can also use to learn vocabulary.

Some helpful web sites about learning Dutch are 2BDutch.nl, taalthuis.nl, and beetjespellen.nl. I also recommend watching the news at uitzendinggemist.nl.

Of course, for all of these, you have to have the discipline to make yourself do them. Unfortunately they don't offer the helpful kind of pressure that a course does.

As far as learning how to speak Dutch goes... I think you have to find a way to talk with both native and non-native speakers. There's just no substitute for learning how to distinguish and how to make the sounds of the language. If you can build up a bigger vocabulary, you might be able to do more immersive activities (such as the often-suggested "speak only Dutch at home at least one day per week" strategy).
posted by neushoorn at 3:16 AM on January 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


Best answer: My situation is almost identical to yours, although over the last 6 months my comprehension has improved and I've started to use extremely simple "stock phrases" when I'm out-and-about.

Once I knew a few of these phrases, I found the greatest barrier to actually using them was my confidence in understanding a response (or understanding the initial words to trigger my stock phrase). I just didn't recognise individual words and thus could not understand even simple sentences.

What helped me the most was fairly simple: watching TV and films in Dutch with Dutch subtitles. I didn't understand 90% of what was being said, but it helped me separate words from the jumbledsentenceofDucthwords. It was frustrating as hell, but once I was able to separate words, I "just" had to learn grammar, words, and more phrases.

It helped, at least at first.
posted by fakelvis at 3:35 AM on January 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


When i first arrived in the NL i had very little extra funds available, and took advantage of the free classes offered by the local government ( first Eindhoven, then Amsterdam) as part of their Inburgering initiative ( insertion? classes for foreigners to better mingle with the locals ). It came with a book and a Cd to do exercises at home, which i found quite good ( book is called CODE 1, 2, 3 ). The inburgering as i understand is mandatory for certain nationalities to get their visas renewed, so i'm assuming it's offered everywhere in the NL. Or at least you could travel to the sign up/get the book and cd, then work on your dutch from home, and possibly attend the classes occasionally for live support. I ultimately passed my NT2 exam after a bit less than a year of the city's classes. ( at ROC school )
Success!
posted by PardonMyFrench at 3:58 AM on January 26, 2012


Best answer: Rosetta Stone is really good (I've used it to practice for other languages) , but you need to be aware of two things when using it:

- As neushoorn points out, it is a stickler for absolutely standard pronounciation. This is an advantage for you, as a foreigner learning, as long as you take it for granted that native speakers (who speak 'living' Dutch, rather than textbook standard) will also be counted as wrong, and that you will constantly have errors pointed out. Remember that you are not aspiring to mimic any form of living Dutch dialect (you are not a CIA agent trying to pretend that you are from a particular part of the Netherlands in order to pull of a grandiose spy plot, or anything) - you are trying to get as close to fluent, standard Dutch-with-a-foreign-accent as you can get.

- It contains NO cultural information whatsoever - Rosetta Stone uses the same imagery sets and scenarios for all languages I've ever seen. It will help you practice Dutch, but you will need to supplement if you want to learn how to politely interact with actual people in the actual Netherlands!
posted by Wylla at 4:06 AM on January 26, 2012


I highly recommend Pimsleur method.
posted by leigh1 at 4:52 AM on January 26, 2012


Response by poster: Thank you all everyone!

I forgot to mention that, despite being fluent in it, I'm not a native English speaker, my mother tongue is European Portuguese and at times, I find it extremely frustrating to mimic Dutch pronunciation because of this.

I've been looking at everything that was recommended and tried the Rosetta Stone already (only done the first couple exercises, but found them pretty easy).
posted by Trexsock at 5:00 AM on January 26, 2012


Marco's site is fun for vocabulary. He has a great sense of humor about learning Dutch.
posted by jgirl at 5:45 AM on January 26, 2012


I used a Pimsleur basic Turkish once and found it rather terrible. - well just really boring and ineffective compared to the Michel Thomas method tapes I've done. (French, German and Dutch).

I think in the long run the particular method doesn't matter that much - it just comes down to hours spent reading / speaking / learning. finding something you can do for at least an hour every single day will be more effective than something you put off and resent having to do.
posted by mary8nne at 6:29 AM on January 26, 2012


Perhaps as a native Portuguese speaker, you would find Braned idiomas useful. They offer individualized courses via Skype. I don't know anything about them, so I can't recommend them. However, there are characteristic errors that native speakers of any language make when they learn a foreign language; I've found it useful to consult teachers or books that address those errors.
posted by brianogilvie at 7:23 AM on January 26, 2012


...watching TV and films in Dutch with Dutch subtitles.

Oh yeah. This. Especially shows with a lot of repetition, like game shows. Even watching shows in English with Dutch subtitles helps out a lot (though the translations are usually pretty loose, and get less accurate the more fluent you become).

Also, when you speak Dutch, and the person responds in English (as happens all the time), you must resist, and keep speaking Dutch. Do not switch back over to English. It's sooooooo easy to give in, but just keep at it, even as they wonder why you're not grabbing on to the courtesy they're extending you. Being in a small town might actually help you out on this.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:29 AM on January 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Seconding that having your partner speak Dutch with you at home should be number one priority. If you don't do that, you're just not going to learn it, because chances are your interactions with your partner add up to a lot more conversation than outside the home. First try one of the online or tape suggestions in this thread, and get yourself up to a few hundred words. Then agree with your partner that, for example, all interactions outside the dinnertable conversation will be in Dutch. When you get a bit better, start working Dutch into the dinner or post-dinner talk. Also tell your friends and others what you are doing and specifically ask them to help by not switching to English.

As a side note, every time I hear Dutch or read something in Dutch online there are more English terms creeping into that language. Maybe that's true of other languages with limited utility outside a small country.
posted by beagle at 7:37 AM on January 26, 2012


Along with the excellent suggestions given, you might want to listen to Dutch music as much as you can. I've found that listening and singing along (as much as possible) can really help with pronunciation. You can find some songs with lyrics on Youtube. I like Guus Meeuwis - Het Is Een Nacht (met lyrics). It's especially good for pronunciation when you get it stuck in your head. ;)
posted by wiskunde at 11:46 AM on January 26, 2012


nthing Michel Thomas, also watching Dutch TV online.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:49 PM on January 26, 2012


Or watching TV on your home set. (sorry I didn't read the full question or the responses).

Michel Thomas is still heel goed.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:51 PM on January 26, 2012


If you have an iPhone, get one of the NL-EN dictionary apps so you can look up words when you're out and about, and if need be, show the translation to the person you're talking to so they can tell you how to pronounce it properly! That way you can at least start out trying to speak Dutch, and if you get stuck, ok, they speak English.

I would also learn a bunch of standard phrases to get yourself around the supermarket, bank, pub etc in Dutch, if you haven't already.
posted by EatMyHat at 10:35 AM on January 27, 2012


Best answer: +1 for listening to Guus Meeuwis - he sings very clearly.

I know you want Internet resources, but I never found any that suited me (I lived in NL for four years). If you have an iPhone, well, I never found any good iOS apps for learning, either, but WordRoll NE is pretty useful as a pocket dictionary for quick lookups.

To improve your reading, you could try writing down words you don't know. Aim to write down, say, ten a day. The idea is not necessarily to learn them - though obviously that's a good idea - but just to get into the habit of paying attention to written Dutch, rather than ignoring it (in favour of the French or the diagrams or asking your SO or just using common sense). Trying to read the newspaper at this point might well just depress you. Picking out a few unfamiliar words from it, and looking them up if you feel like it? Much more achievable.

How far would you have to travel to attend a course? If you could get there by train, there are various NS discount cards that would bring the cost down significantly; also, you mention intensive courses, but there are evening courses too, which would at least spread the cost of travel a bit. The courses I attended were both two evenings a week for ten weeks.

I can also offer some book recommendations, if that's of any interest:

Basic Dutch, by Jenneke A. Oosterhoff - an introduction to Dutch, with exercises.

Dubbel Dutch, by Kevin Cook - this is probably beyond your current level, but it's a very readable reference book that discusses the language and its quirks as seen by a foreigner, and perhaps it would interest you enough to help keep you motivated.

Nederlands voor Buitenlanders, by Jan Erik Grezel - the textbook used in the first course I attended. This is aimed at foreigners of all nationalities and all educational backgrounds, and as such it offers a very gentle learning pace, with much less emphasis on grammar than the other two I've mentioned. Depending on your preferred learning style, that may be a plus or a minus. It provides translations into various languages for all the words it uses (whereas the more advanced textbooks tend to be entirely in Dutch), and each chapter is structured around a practical scenario (catching a train, going to the market, visiting the doctor etc.). It's also painfully expensive, I'm afraid, but at least it comes with a CD with audio recordings of all the scenarios. "Ik kom uit Engeland... Ik heb de Engelse nationaliteit..."

I notice that the bol.com entry for that textbook also suggests the related book Woordenlijst Portugees - I guess that's a Dutch-Portuguese version of the book's vocabulary list. Maybe that would be useful on its own, as a basis for flashcards; I don't think you can get the English vocab list as a standalone.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:39 AM on January 28, 2012


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