My Dutch Dream

colloquial dutch

I’m quite annoyed with my language progress so far. If you read my earlier post: Learning Dutch Update, then you’ll know that back in October I started making a really good effort and got about halfway through the Michel Thomas Dutch foundation course.

Unfortunately, I lost momentum and instead of resuming I intend to start from the beginning again. I’ve also listened to the first 3 or 4 chapters of Pimsleur Dutch. Somewhat similar but also quite different method of teaching. I think its good to see two different angles and helps to learn the language better in a bizarre way.

But the last I did on this was about 6 weeks ago. In all that time I have listened to a lot of Dutch radio NOS Radio 1 so all is not lost.

My current level of Dutch is weird. I can barely conjugate a sentence of my own choice and my vocabulary is limited and yet I recognise many words. When you consider that most people only use a couple thousand words on a regular basis then I hear and repeat many of these out loud when they come up on the radio.

My next step is to pick up a textbook again. I did a single chapter of Colloquial Dutch a few months ago but now I want to do it from start to finish. I think this will really help me a lot to consolidate what I have already learned. I just need to find some time to do this. I’ve got a pretty hectic schedule for the next month so don’t see how I can squeeze it in. At the same time, I don’t want to be writing about my lack of progress again in a few months time!

I know that you can survive in Amsterdam on English alone. I knew a Danish chick who used to work in Route 66 coffeeshop who spoke zero Dutch which really surprised me. But because I have some health issues, I feel that I need as good a command of Dutch as possible before I move so that I can navigate the bureaucracy successfully. It’s an urban myth that you can’t learn a language to a very high level without even visiting the country – I know plenty of people who have done it.

By the way, the listening-reading method I spoke about earlier? I tried it but it wasn’t for me, not at this stage anyway. I found my eyes moving rapidly back and forth due to the difference in word order between English and Dutch and felt like I was not learning anything from doing the exercise. Perhaps I was learning subconciously. But without any kind of confirmation of this I was loath to spend 10 or so hours doing it.