One of the random things we learned in class last night was the difference between leuk and gezellig. While leak can translate to ‘fun’, gezellig is a bit harder to translate. The usual translation given is ‘cozy’, especially in terms of warm feelings.
He said the difference between leuk and gezellig is that something gezellig can only be done with another person, not by yourself. Leuk is generally something you yourself find fun, though it can also be said of a group.
Another nice thing about the Wednesday night class is sometimes we do the exercises more than one time. While I don’t really need the help (I’m not kidding – this class is basically 95% review for me), it is nice for the other students. For example, last night we repeated the same exercise three times. The first time was just to state the answers. The second time was to find the verbs and circle them, and explain that if the verb was plural, the subject also needed to be plural (which for some students is a helpful trick to find the subject). The third and last time was to switch both the subject and the verb into plural or single – the opposite of what the sentence was originally.
Another interesting side note that he had was over the word nogal which translates to ‘rather’ in English. He then compared that to other, similar words.
Het is een beetje duur. Ik koop het. It’s a little expensive. I (will) buy it.
Het is nogal duur. Misschien koop ik het. It’s rather expensive. I might buy it.
Het is heel (erg) duur. Ik koop ik niet. It’s very expensive. I will not buy it.
He is also a fan of synonyms (just ask Marco who had to look over my homework ;)). The teacher mentioned that a synonym for ‘nogal’ is ‘tamelijk’.
So although the classes are mostly review, I do learn a lot of random things, and I do think it is helping improve my vocabulary.
Life in the Hague 