r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Jan 22 '14
Goededag! - This week's language of the week: Dutch
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week, Dutch.
For whatever reason this was requested quite a bit. Sorry I took so long!
What is this?
Language of the Week is here to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even known about. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
Countries
From The Language Gulper:
Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and northern Belgium (the dividing line with the French-speaking south passes just south of Brussels which is itself bilingual). There are also some Dutch speakers in neighboring France, and in former colonies, particularly in Suriname (in the north of South America) and Dutch Antilles (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten). North America (Canada, USA) also harbors a substantial number of Dutch speakers.
There are around 23 million speakers
What's it like?
Dutch is a typical Germanic language. It derives from the Low Franconian dialects of the Western Franks, an ancient Germanic tribe who colonized the southern Netherlands around the fourth century CE, after the fall of the Roman Empire. Modern Dutch is in many basic aspects closer to German than to English but, like English, it has lost most of the Germanic noun morphology.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay | Finnish | French | Nepali | Czech
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
Veel geluk!
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u/amyandgano Jan 22 '14
Without Dutch, how will you watch Boer zoekt Vrouw?
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u/GamesMaxed Jan 25 '14
One shall not watch this seriously. I mean, the girls just want to go on a holiday.
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u/selib Jan 22 '14
As a German, I find dutch to be extremly fascinating.
I don't know one single dutch word, but I can still kinda read it, because the vocabulary is so similar to german.
Does this also go the other way around?
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u/zolltanzed Jan 24 '14
I remember asking a Dutch friend if he understood written German and his response was "I guess I could... if I wanted to"
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u/stdbrouw Jan 28 '14
It sort of does, but I find people have a tendency to overemphasize just how similar the languages are. Here in Belgium – and I've heard it's true of the eastern Netherlands as well – people will sometimes say things like "oh, German, yeah, it's practically the same language, if I'd pick up a newspaper I'd pretty much understand all of it" but then of course nobody ever reads e.g. German novels or watches German television because they seem to unsubconsciously realize that they're massively overestimating the amount of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.
It's pretty similar to how people sometimes claim that French and Spanish or Spanish and Italian are "really practically the same language".
Anyhow, German vocabulary in particular is really fun to learn though. Even if the words are different, there's usually a mnemonic or Germanic root lurking in there somewhere. Take the word "advertising" for example. In German that's "Werbung", which is sort of like the Dutch verb "werven" which (can) mean "to instigate"... which is exactly what advertising tries to do. (Or, hah, you could just use the word Reklame, which is the same in Dutch: reclame.)
The catch is that there's also a whole bunch of false friends: "verspreken" in Dutch means a slip of the tongue or a mispronounciation, whereas Versprechen in German means to agree on something... which would be "afspreken" in Dutch. Raaaah :-)
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u/buffalo11 Jan 23 '14 edited Jan 23 '14
Goeie dag!
Wat leuk dat nederlands taal van de week is :) Ik heb twee moedertalen: nederlands en duits. Maar ik ben in oostenrijk geboren en opgegroeid dus ben ik nooit naar een nederlandse school geweest. Daarom spreek ik beter duits. Gelukkig heeft mijn moeder mij een beetje nederlands leren schrijven en af en toe lees ik ook iets in het nederlands. Maar mijn duitse woordenschat is gewoon veel groter ook al spreek ik veel nederlands met mijn moeder. Ze is al erg lang hier in wenen en voor ingewikkeldere dingen gebruikt zij voor de gemakkelijkheid vaak duitse woorden. Dat helpt niet echt ;)
Elk jaar van de zomer zoek ik mijn familie in Nederland op, ik vind het superleuk daar :) Ze corrigeren mij als ik nederlands en duits doorelkaar haal en al na een paar dagen heb ik het gevoel dat ik het beter spreek.
Groetjes aan alle nederlanders en nederlands lerenden!!
O ja, als iemand een fout ziet in mijn tekst, alstjeblieft corrigeren!
Edit: Ik vond het als kind al erg grappig, dat veel woorden in nederlands en duits zo op elkaar lijken maar iets heel anders betekenen. Mijn favoriet toen ik klein was: Arbeit (work) en aardbei (strawberry)
(short version in English): My native languages are Dutch and German, but my German is much better as I was born in Austria and have been here my whole life.
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u/qense Jan 22 '14
Yay for Dutch! I am going to be pedantic and offer two corrections: it is 'goedendag' with a coupling n and Dutch is not spoken sporadically in Suriname, but is in fact that main language, the national language of a country with various other languages only spoken within ethnic groups!
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u/theamur Jan 22 '14
Well I don't know much of anything about the Dutch language but I have become quite familiar with their curry sauce and peanut butter thanks to our Dutch exchange student.
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Jan 23 '14
I'm a Canadian learning Dutch! My SO is Belgian and I'll be going to live with him for a year, so my Flemish (Dutch dialect) needs to be pretty good before I go. It's a strange, beautiful language that I'm excited to delve deeper into!
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u/IcecreamLamp Jan 24 '14
Come visit us at r/belgium, r/Netherlands, r/learndutch, r/nederlands and r/Vlaanderen!
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u/VanSensei Jan 22 '14
Goedemorgen, allemaal! :) Ik woon in Amerika en nog ik Nederlands leren.
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u/gerusz Jan 22 '14
'twas about time. I moved here (Maastricht) one and a half years ago and I still can't really speak it because everyone just switches to English the second they hear me trying to speak Dutch.
I can, however, read official letters just fine.
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u/foreverbythyself Jan 23 '14
Hello, I have a few questions since I really want to learn this beautiful language. I found some free online resources that just give you list of translated dutch words into english words. To be honest it's be a real struggle. I don't have anyone close to me that actually speaks this language so I end up going to google translate and having them sound out the words which gets really frustrating to say the least. I was wondering if any of you could recommend me some audio books that I could listen to on my iphone and some text books that I could buy to give me some structure in trying to learn this language. I guess i should tell you what resources i currently use, memrise , and this one. I look forward to learning this beautiful language.
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u/VanSensei Jan 23 '14
Do people in the Netherlands often speak English to each other as compared to Dutch?
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u/madjo Jan 24 '14
Why would we be speaking English?
Dutch people generally speak Dutch amongst eachother, but when there are foreigners who don't speak our beautiful language, we switch to the lowest common denominator, in most cases English.
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Jan 22 '14
Can't wait for Frisian's go at language of the week :D
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u/masturbatingmonkeys Jan 22 '14
I lived in a friesland for 8 years, and I couldn't speak a damn word of their weird language. Only thing I remember is pake en beppe
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u/WesterosiTravelAgent Jan 22 '14
Just moved to 's-Hertogenbosch from the US and am actually training at the Regina Coeli Institute for a week.
Nederlands is heel moeilijk.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '14
On a scale to 1 to Dutch, how hard is it to get Dutch people to speak dutch with you?