Learning Dutch

Last night was another Dutch class by ROC Mondriaan, where we met our Wednesday night teacher. While he is our teacher for the rest of the classes, the school still has not found a permanent teacher for Monday nights.

The teacher put some information about himself on the board – he is in his 60s and has been teaching Dutch for 34 years. He has taught Dutch for buitenlanders (people from other countries) for 14 years. Before that he taught Dutch for Dutch students ages 11 to 18. He loves language in general, and has written two books. He normally teaches by the ROC Mondriaan in Delft, so this was his first time in The Hague building. He didn’t even have a key for the classroom yet, or the textbook. So he brought along some other stuff for us to look at.

One thing was a story that we read aloud (voorlezen, to read aloud):

Not too bad of a story. Peter is trying to get from Gouda to Rotterdam to visit his friends. First he gets in the wrong train (it goes in the wrong direction) and then the second train is delayed (vertraging, a hated word among Netherlanders and Roger in particular). But on the third train, he meets a girl. The teacher taught us the phrase: “Een geluk bij een ongeluk” which is roughly “a good (thing) out of an accident” though it is really translated as “a blessing in disguise”.

He had another worksheet with just verbs:

Ik probeer = I try

Ik kies = I choose

Ik koop = I buy

Ik betaal = I pay

Ik ruil = I return (the item)

And the associated Dutch saying: “Van ruilen komt huilen.” (From returning comes crying.)

Another thing that was mentioned was the nummer van de week, or the number of the week (It’s week 36 out of 52, by the way). I must admit I never thought about the number of the week I was in when I lived in America, but it does seem to be pretty important in the Netherlands for appointments. A few of the wedding to-do lists Marco made included the week number. Incredulous, I asked him why. Week x just does not mean anything to me.

Another interesting thing we discussed in class were Dutch words that are spelled the same but have two different meanings:

bank = where you go to deal with your money, but it also means ‘couch’

zijn = it means ‘his’, but it’s also the unconjugated ‘to be’ verb

haar = it means her AND hers, but it also means ‘hair’ (!)

licht = light (in terms of darkness, but also the weight of something. Same as English.)

regel = rule, but it also means ‘line’. In the story above the first page had 37 lines/regels. I also found it amusing that the word for ‘paragraph’ in Dutch is alinea, which to me looks like ‘line’…

Until next week!

Last night I started my first Dutch class by ROC Mondriaan. It is B1 level and my particular class meets on Monday and Wednesday nights from 6:45 to 10:00PM. It runs for 20 weeks, so with some holidays factored in it will probably end sometime in February (!). I knew that I had to get there early to pay for the class so I arrived at the school at 6:30. There were 5 people ahead of me in line, but I managed to get done just before 6:40, though I then had to go to another line to get my official roster and figure out what classroom I was in. By the time I was done at 6:40, there were about 20 people waiting behind me in first line to pay.

Needless to say, when I actually made it to the classroom there was only one other person there, a student. I tried to speak to him in Dutch but he looked really confused and kept switching to English. (He would then confuse me later when he spoke pretty decent Dutch to the teacher and had good pronunciation skills when reading a passage from a book. Okay…)

The first class was… the first class. People trickled in over the next hour as they paid for the course and came upstairs. While there were 24 students signed up for this section, only 15 were there last night.

There were a few interesting stories from the students… one of them studying as a software engineer in India but when she moved here the only work she could find was as a cleaner (schoonmaker). That is probably partially the language barrier and partially just the poorer economy in general. Or perhaps she didn’t finish her degree. Another gentleman moved here from Iran in 1995 as a vluchteling (refugee) but was stuck as a vluchteling for 11 years! During that time you are not allowed to work, study, or do anything much while they decide whether you can stay. You also have to live in assigned housing areas.

We didn’t find out until we were at the first class what book we needed to buy. While the professor had copied the first chapter, we need to find our own copy. I went to the recommended bookstore (a bit of a walk) but they did not have it so I decided to reserve a copy at a bookstore a bit closer to home. I can pick it up on Thursday morning.  Also the professor we had tonight was a substitute of sorts – they are not sure who are final professor is for Monday nights. So it seems like we will have a different person teaching us for the Monday class than the Wednesday class, which might prove interesting.

Finally (as I need to wrap this up and head to my volunteer job), the class itself wasn’t as hard as I had hoped. They used to use a different textbook but due to price issues (120 euros) they went with the current textbook (40-42.50 euros). Unfortunately the professor said that the cheaper one is not as good. Also, like every class, some students learn faster than others (to put it diplomatically) so it seems like I will continue with my self studying while the class itself goes on. Geen probleem. (No problem.)

But considering the subsidized price (30 euros for the entire 20 weeks, 42.50 for the textbook) it is completely worth it!

Today I received a letter from ROC Mondriaan (a school) — I was officially accepted into the B1 Dutch language course! It feels like ages since I have been in a Dutch course, but it’s really only been 2 and a half months…

Since I live in The Hague, the lessons are mostly subsidized by the city and I only have to pay €30 and also the cost of the textbooks (and that covers 14-16 weeks or so).

The classes are on Monday and Wednesday nights (!) from 6:45 until 10:00PM. That is double what I had for the A2 course. Should be interesting!

On Monday night I went to an open house at ROC Mondriaan in The Hague to look into a different option for continuing my Dutch language lessons at level B1 (pdf). The nice thing is that this school receives a subsidy from the city’s government, so it doesn’t cost the student nearly as much. €20 if you registered that day, €30 otherwise, plus the cost of textbooks. I decided that I would continue with B1 rather than trying to skip ahead to B2 after doing some crazy amount of studying over the summer. Probably for the best.

The open house went pretty well. There was actually a line of people waiting, but perhaps they were here for a lower level as I ended up getting taken before I even sat down. There was a bit of confusion when I said I was American (for a few minutes I thought I didn’t qualify for a subsidy) but it seems to have just been a case of the person not knowing what the rules were for Americans. My intake person asked another colleague, and he asked me for my education level. When I said Master’s that seemed to satisfy him.

All I know is that the course will likely start in September and that it will last for 20 weeks. I did say my preference was for a night course. The intake person also mentioned that I would probably take a test before the class started, to gauge my learning level so that students who learn faster (or slower) are put together.

Lastly, I’ll still be doing self-study over the summer with the other B1 course textbooks that I bought (Contact 2) so hopefully this class is also a breeze.

Yesterday was the last lesson for the A2 Dutch course. We also got our test results back. I scored a 171/193 points. That’s pretty good.

Total points: 171 (goed/good). Good range: 145-193. Advice: Go further with level B1.

I did of course make a few stupid mistakes. 😉 Two mistakes with the perfectum (example: I have gone) and two with the imperfectum (example: I went). And my Achilles heel is prepositions … I think I missed 5 out of 22 or something similar! But otherwise, it was good.

The rest of the class went pretty well. We didn’t look at the textbook or the workbook to do the last chapter, but rather did some more fun things. First she mentioned some good books to look at:

Nederlandse Grammatica voor Anderstalingen; ISBN 90 5517 014 3. She said this grammar book was rather comprehensive.

Nederlands in actie: Methode NT2 voor hoogopgeleide anderstaligen: ISBN: 978 90 469 0298 1. Apparently this is a good replacement for Contact 2, which is the textbook that we would be using in the next class.

Then we took turns doing voorlezen (reading aloud) from a 1973 children’s book called Floddertje. We read two of the short stories — “Opgesloten” and “Allemaal kaal” (which are ‘locked’ and ‘totally bald’). In the first story, she gets locked in her room so she won’t get dirty before guests come over. Doesn’t work. In the second story, she goes to the hair salon but due to a misunderstanding between her and her mom, ends up totally bald.

After that, we finished up by playing a vocabulary game: Pim Pam Pet. You have a stack of cards with vocabulary questions and one player spins to see what letter the answer must start with.

For example, I won these two cards:

een transport middel -> R -> Randstad Rail

Wat zie je op een boederij? -> K -> Koe

*

Method of transport -> R -> Randstad Rail (name of a Dutch train service)

What do you see on a farm? -> K-> Cow

And that was the end!