Apps

Dutch apps (Or: Words Maker Pro and 9292)

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Niki

Two new apps have been added to the Dutch page. I have my iPhone registered to the Dutch store, and my iTouch is still registered to American store, so hopefully this way I can find more Dutch games. (It’s not as easy as I had hoped!)

Dutch apps

Words Maker Pro (Apple)

This app is available in English, Dutch, German, French, and Spanish. You can either play against the computer in varying difficulty levels or you can play a multiplayer game if you and your friend have a game center account.

Initially you are given 25 letters, and from those letters you must make a word that is between 3 and 7 letters long. You drag each letter down from the playing board to the “rack” to make a word. On each round, you have two squares which are double letter and one square which is triple letter, for a higher score. The game ends when all 100 letters are used or when both players ‘pass’ on their turn.

This is a fun game to play if you are learning Dutch, as it really tests you to find words to play. The trick is to play it while also using a Dutch-English dictionary, so that you learn new vocabulary when the computer plays a word you do not know.

9292 (Apple | Android)

This public transportation app is all but essential if you don’t have a car in the Netherlands. It shows routes and times for the tram, train, bus, subway and ferry from point A to B. You can also create an account and save locations to your device so you don’t have to enter them each time.

Categories: Apps | Tags: | 2 Comments

Studying (Or: Dutch flash cards)

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Niki

One of the services I use to study Dutch vocabulary is the iTouch app iFlashcards (iTouch & Android). I have used it for vocabulary ranging from items around the house, body parts, animals, opposites, and more.

screenshot of the iFlash app

One of the things that I like about the app is the ease of making flashcards. I generally type them up in a .txt file on my PC and upload it to the website, and then find my cards on my iTouch by using my account number. The format is pretty simple – question and answer on their own lines, and then a blank line, and then the next question and answer on their own lines.  You can even format cards if needed (bold, italics, color, etc).

On a typical flashcard, first you see the “question” (elbow) and once you tap the screen, the answer appears. You can then say if you got it right or wrong (lower right circle and x). The default mode is to keep repeating the question every 5-10 cards until you get it right. Once you get it right, it does not appear again in the quiz.

It’s a nice little free program, and it has proven pretty useful. As a bonus, you can also search for other people’s public flash card sets – although there is no guarantee of correctness.

Categories: Apps, Learning Dutch | Tags: | 1 Comment

Zondag (Or: Not enough sports)

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Niki

Eek. It’s Sunday, and there’s a Monday staring right at us! But it’s still miles above winter and darkness falling at 5pm.

I added two more apps to the Dutch apps page based on some suggestions that I received. Feel free to keep them coming! It’s always a bit interesting to search for apps, since the Dutch iTunes page doesn’t filter out English results. And since English is spoken by a lot of people in the Netherlands, most of the results on the page seem to be apps written for English speaking persons. (Which is why any suggestions you have are definitely helpful.)

Yesterday was definitely a sports filled day — but for some reason, all of the teams I hoped would win did not. (The Netherlands, and then hoping for a tie in Germany-Portugal and not getting one, and then the Miami Heat won in basketball, and the New Jersey Devils won in hockey… you get the idea!)

On the other side, there wasn’t that much sports on tv today, although I did find the Italy-Croatia game Euro 2012 game interesting. I wasn’t rooting for any particular team, so that probably helped! Usually it’s dead in the summer after the basketball and hockey seasons end. But at least we have Euro 2012 and the Olympics. Of course, I can’t really mention Tour de France since they never show it live on on American tv anymore, since Lance Armstrong retired.

But tomorrow it is back to work… My alarm will be going off very early in the morning, I fear.

Categories: Apps, Sports | Tags: | 2 Comments

Dutch apps (Or: Building blocks for the blog)

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Niki

Today I added a new page for the blog: Dutch apps. It has always been my goal to create different pages across the top of the screen (look in the upper right near ‘About’) that talk about different Dutch things – language, moving, daily living, etc.

These are the apps that I use on my iTouch, mainly to help me learn the Dutch language. Here’s a sample:

DutchWord (Apple) –

This app gives you 1 new word per day. They give you that word in an example sentence (English and Dutch).

They also have a game where you are asked how to spell a word (random words it seems). For example, you might see on your screen:

decent
f-ts–nl-jk

And you have four letters beneath. i, e, a, o. You have to fill in the blanks from left to right. Once you start getting used to Dutch spelling rules, you will start to see patterns. For example, the end of the word is probably -lijk, so you don’t want to click on the i just yet.

With some trial and error you click the a (clicking the wrong letter just says ‘Opps’). So now you have fats–nl-jk with i, e, o left. ‘oe’ is more likely to be a letter combination in Dutch than ‘eo’, so try the o next then the e. Finally put in the i – fatsoenlijk. Sometimes the game is hard (you have to fill in all of the letters) and sometimes it is easy (you only have to fill in two letters, and both happen to be o!) but at least you see the word again.

* * * * * * * *

Feel free to post your favorite Dutch apps in the comment area! Anything related to the Netherlands – it does not have to be about learning the language only.

Categories: Apps, Learning Dutch | Tags: | 3 Comments

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.