My Dutch Dream

Just thought I’d update you on my Dutch learning.

I’ve been delaying my learning for a while with really no excuse. So a few days ago I decided to start Michel Thomas Dutch Foundation.

I’ve been waiting for this course for a while. Michel Thomas was famous for teaching celebrities and others how to learn a language very quickly. It’s a pure audio course of around 12 hours or so.

It goes like this: you are in a class with two other students. The teacher tells you how to say something basic and then introduces new words on a regular basis. Then she asks you to translate many new sentences.

e.g. How would you say “I want to go home” or some other sentence. Then you say it out loud and see if you got it right. Of course, this method is so good that 9 times out of 10, you do get it right.

Plus you learn from the other student’s mistakes like in a real classroom.

Anyway, I’m already half way through the course. Basically it is 8 CDs, each one takes a little over an hour and I’m going to do one a day.

But this weekend, starting tomorrow, I’m going to have a good crack at the listening reading method I spoke about earlier.

Basically, I want a very good level of Dutch before I move. I know it sounds crazy but I have a fear of living in a country where I do not know the the language. Of course, this is a bit less living in a country where everyone knows English but living there is different from being a tourist – you need to do mundane things like going to the bank and filling out forms etc.

I once asked a buddy of mine who lived there for a year, an American, and he had not learned much Dutch at all. I said that was probably not a problem, right? But he explained to me that it felt strange to live in a world where you do not know what is going on most of the time.

So to this end I have promised myself to get as much of grip on the language as possible before I go!