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Studying the Dutch Language

I'm not a natrural at languages but they fascinate me. I've always been envious and somewhat in awe of people who can switch between different languages and communicate with ease.

Like many people I "learnt" a language at school (French), passing a GCSE exam in it but still being unable to communicate other than at a very basic level. We learnt lists of vocabulary and recited verb conjugations over a period of 5 years, but when I went to France I had trouble buying a loaf of bread or a metro ticket.

I'd tried picking up bits of a few languages for holiday travel, but after coming back from the trip the incentive to learn was gone and the study would fade out.

When I went to work in the Netherlands it was different - I knew straight away this was a country where I would be returning many times, and that I wanted to be able to really communicate using the language. So I tried to teach myself.

But using Dutch is not so easy, as my first attempts soon showed.

"Answer comes in English"

This is the first barrier to learning the Dutch language. Nearly everyone in the Netherlands speaks excellent English, and when you first utter hesitant phrases in broken Dutch with an English accent, the answer will very probably come back in perfect English.

The reasons people do this are varied, some people feel it's easier to communicate in English than broken Dutch, some wish to help struggling foreigners, some want to practice their English, some want to demonstrate their skills.

To get beyond this stage is hard because each English reply reinforces the feeling that one's language skills aren't yet up to much. And if you don't practice then they never will amount to much. It's actually much easier to avoid the embarassment of trying to speak Dutch and to simply speak English all the time. Many foreigners live for years in the Netherlands in this situation.

There are two ways I found to get beyond this barrier:-

Make sure your opening line is confident and competent.
Learn to learn to say in Dutch "thank you for speaking English but I am trying to learn the Dutch language".

But those things are no good unless you can understand whatever they will say next. Otherwise one line later you'll be back to English again.

I realised pretty soon that a few months of self study would be needed before trying to speak to people. In any case this is good manners.

Next Page - Self Study Methods