Monthly Archives: April 2013

Last night I had my 8th Dutch lesson at the Volkuniversiteit (A2 level). This lesson seemed a bit “off” — as in, it wasn’t that good. Neither the person to my right nor the person to my left did their homework and it seemed to be the same for most of the people in the class. Technically I am a few lessons ahead already, as we did 9C and 10A today, and I’ve already finished the homework through 10B.

Perhaps it is the warmer weather – it is harder to concentrate on the homework and during the class itself. I can definitely tell that it stays lighter outside longer. We didn’t turn the classroom lights on until almost 9PM due to ample light from outside.

The main grammatical thing that we learned was Er, in its simplest form. (There are many uses of Er that are a lot harder to explain. I don’t know all of them.) This version simply translates to “there”. So:

Er is een… There is a...

Er zijn… There are…

Er is geen zolder. There is no attic.

Er zijn geen winkels in de buurt. There are no shops in the neighborhood.

So it follows English pretty closely. The most surprising thing is that it didn’t appear in the textbook until now — I’ve been using it in Dutch speech for some months already, and I suspect most of my classmates have as well.

One random thing I heard the professor mutter quietly under her breath was Waarom zijn bananen krom? (Why are bananas curved?) Unfortunately I forget why she said it. I asked Marco and he said this is a rhetorical question you ask when there really isn’t an answer that can be given. She definitely seemed a bit more exasperated with the class in general this week.

One thing that was mentioned a lot in today’s chapter was the song A beetje verliefd (A little love) by Andre Hazes, a Dutch singer who passed away in 2004. It’s one of those songs that almost everyone in the country knows, even if they don’t care for it. It’s classified as a Smartlap (tearjerker). YouTube with Dutch Lyrics. Marco hates the music but wanted to tell you that that singer has an Amsterdam accent, as does 90% of the Smartlappen singers.

Another thing that was mentioned randomly was Koetjes en kalfjes (literal translation = cows and calfs, actual translation = small talk). Perhaps back in the day when there was even more farmland than there is now,  small talk did refer to how the animals were doing. Maybe!

The blog title refers to the tradition (at least in America) of a person being in front of a group of friends or family during an event (like receiving a surprise award). The audience then requests the person say something about the event/award by shouting “Speech! Speech!” (toespraak in het Nederlands?)

Last night was my 7th Dutch lesson. Halfway there! It was a pretty good lesson – this time I learned a lot of little things, rather than anyone one big thing.

In the previous class the teacher asked that we write about something (anything we wanted) and speak for not more than two minutes. I had no idea what to write about (in English or in Dutch!) so I asked Marco for help. You can see what it looked like below. I still had some errors of my own, like where I said “a” when I should have said “een” in the first line.

Before I came to the Netherlands, I lived in a little town called “Pearl River” in New York. Nothing happened in the town. The craziest day was St. Patrick’s Day because most of the people were Irish. Pearl River had a big parade for that day  – the second biggest in all of New York. The parade draws about 70,000 visitors or more. There are also many bars where people could drink – the main street had four bars in a hundred meters. My fiance said that Queen’s Day is the same – there are many drunk people.

And that’s what you write about when you do not know what to write about!

Some other things I learned in the class included “little” words that changed based on whether the situation was formal or informal. (Are you close to the person you are talking to? Then you can be more informal.)

niets (formal) / niks (informal) = nothing

nou (informal) = well (also used as a “stall for more time” word.) Nou, ja…

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If the question contains al, you’ll probably answer with nog niet. If the question contains the word nog, you’ll probably answer with meer and a denial word (niet, geen).

Ben je al vrij? Nee, ik ben nog niet vrij.
Heb je nog vakantie? Nee, ik heb geen vakantie meer.

Are you free already? No, I am not yet free.
Do you have vacation still? No, I have no more vacation.