Reading

Helemaal uitgelezen (Of: De Brief voor de Koning)

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Niki

English follows after.

Op vrijdagavond heb ik het boek De Brief voor de Koning uitgelezen. Eerlijk gezegd moet ik ‘helemaal uitgelezen’ gebruiken omdat het een dikke pil voor mij was – ongeeveer 450 paginas! Ik heb andere Nederlandse boeken gelezen, maar niets met zoveel paginas. Ik heb het van de Centraal Bibliotheek geleend and daar was het geclassificeerd als een ‘B’ boek – dus een boek geschikt voor een kind tussen 9 en 12 jaar.

De Brief voor de Koning is een heel beroemd boek geschreven door een Nederlandse schrijver, Tonke Dragt, in 1962. Tiuri, de hoofdpersoon, zal ridder worden. Hij moest alleen in de kapel overnachten, zonder niets te doen of zeggen en wakker te blijven. Maar ineens hoorde Tiuri een klop op de deur – iemand vroeg voor hulp. Zou hij de deur openen (een ridder moet mensen helpen, toch?) of zou hij niets doen (en de regels volgen om een ridder te worden)? Uiteindelijk ging hij naar de deur en daar begon zijn verhaal en avontuur – hij moest een brief aan een andere koning geven, een koning in een heel ver weg rijk. Maar de vijand was niet ver achter hem…
Ik weet niet meer hoe lang ik bezig was met het lezen van het boek – sinds september? oktober? Maar nu is het helemaal uitgelezen. Ik heb al het vervolg geleend – Geheimen van het Wilde Woud. Dit heeft misschien 465 paginas. Hmmm…

(Bedankt aan mijn SamenSpraak taalcoach – hij heeft me met het boek geholpen).

On Friday evening I finished reading De Brief voor de Koning (The Letter for the King, English wikipedia). If I am honest I must say ‘finally finished’ because it was a very thick book – about 450 pages. I have read other Dutch books but nothing with so many pages. I borrowed it from the Centraal Bibliotheek (Central Library) and they classified it as a ‘B’ book – a book for 9-12 year olds.
De Brief voor de Koning is a very famous book written by a Dutch writer, Tonke Dragt, in 1962. Tiuri, the main character, is about to become a knight. He must only stay in the chapel overnight, without doing or saying anything, and stay awake. But suddenly he hears a knock on the door – someone asked for help. Should he open the door (a knight must help the people, right?) or should he do nothing (and follow the rules to become a knight?). In the end he went to the door. From there his story and adventure begins – he must deliver a letter to a King in a different kingdom. But enemies weren’t far behind…
I don’t know how long I was busy with reading this book – since September? October? But now I have read it cover to cover. I also borrowed the sequel – Geheimen van het Wilde Woud (Secrets from the Wild Forest). This one has about 465 pages. Hmmm.

Thanks to my SamenSpraak coach – he helped me with reading the book.

Categories: Reading | Tags: Book reviews, Books, Dutch language | 4 Comments

De Brief voor de Koning (Or: A classic Dutch young adult book)

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Niki

For the last few months I have been reading a Dutch classic by the name of De Brief voor de Koning (The Letter for the King).

As I am a fan of books with a medieval setting, with knights and castles and the like, I jumped right in. Tiuri, the main character, is unexpectedly tasked with delivering a letter to a King – and this task required him to slip away the night before he was supposed to become a ridder (knight), dashing his hopes of ever becoming one. But the task soon grows complicated, as he watches a knight die, is chased by thieves, and is captured by other knights who believe he is the murderer. (Review in English | Dutch wikipedia page)

At SamenSpraak Café last Wednesday a friend asked another person if they had heard of the book. I was surprised to hear that they knew the book so I looked up the book next day. I had not realized that De Brief voor de Koning was actually a Dutch classic, written in 1962, so it made (more) sense for people to know about it.

For the most part I have listened to the book, rather than read it. I was able to get the CDs from a local library and then place them on my iPhone. But occasionally I do read the book as well, either with my taalmaatje or alone. At the moment I am about to begin the fourth part of the book, pg. 140, with about 300 pages to go…

Categories: Reading | Tags: Book reviews, Books, Dutch language | Leave a comment

Dutch reading (Or: Learning some new vocabulary)

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Niki

The Dutch word for vocabulary is woordenschat, which translates to word treasure (woorden = word, schat = treasure).

Dutch has some ridiculously long words, just like German…

verontschuldigingen = apologies

(zo) nauwlettend = (so) close

dichtstbijzijnde = nearest (try saying that three times fast…)

The Dutch language does also have some short words (compared to English):

zuinig = economical

toeval = coincedence

And some words that I find are very literal with their translation:

zonsopgang = sunrise (literally: “sun’s entrance”)

bakstenen = brick (literally: “bake stones”)

And finally some amusing words:

piepkleine = tiny (amusing because it starts with a word that is pronounced like “peep” and then ends with “kleine” or “small”)

vanuit haar ooghoeken = from the corner of her eye (but literally: “from her eye corners”)

All of that was from the first chapter of Harry Potter – about 12 pages. On to chapter 2! (Wednesday maybe…tomorrow looks a bit crazy as is.)

Categories: Reading | Tags: Dutch language | 2 Comments

Harry Potter (Or: Reading for vocabulary in Dutch)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Niki

Since I finished the Dutch test earlier this week, I decided to treat myself on Wednesday morning and head off to the library to pick up the first Harry Potter book (Sorcerer’s Stone) in Dutch, along with the accompanying audio version. The latter I immediately transferred to my iPhone. While I have an external CD drive to plug into my netbook, it is cumbersome at best.

This actually continues the same tradition that I still had when I lived at home with my parents – I have two or three of the Harry Potter books in Spanish as well. While my Spanish speaking skills were horrible at best, my reading skills were decent at that level. It still took about 5-7 minutes to read each page, though.

Part of the reason I seem to choose Harry Potter is because I have read the books and seen the movies in English. (Now that I am reading the first book over again in Dutch, I’m wondering if I need to brush up on what actually happens in the books. I don’t remember x y and z happening.)

The main goal of this project is to learn more vocabulary, while also hearing the spoken word. While my spoken Dutch is miles ahead of my what my Spanish was, my vocabulary and pronunciation definitely need to improve. So it is slower going then it was with the Spanish version.

One thing I have quickly learned – listen to at least a few paragraphs of Dutch before you pause the chapter to write down some vocabulary. Otherwise, you will never get into the flow of things!

I suspect this will take me the rest of the year …

Categories: Reading | Tags: Dutch language | 6 Comments

A2 books (Or: Learning Dutch)

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Niki

Here is the latest book that I read at The Hague Public Library:

This book is from Leespunt.nl and has two stories in it: Vader en zoon / Dik (Father and son / Thick). The book is listed at A2 level. I read the first story (15pg) using a Dutch-English dictionary app but I did not use a dictionary app at all for the second story (17pg). If took about an hour in total.

The library has one more A2 book. After that I have a few choices at B1, the next step up in difficulty. Next week!

Categories: Reading | Tags: Dutch language | Leave a comment

65 pages (Or: Example of “makkelijk lezen”)

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Niki

Today I went back to the Hague public library and decided to sit down and read one of the makkelijk lezen (easier reading) books. The series I picked up is called “Fast Lane” and the particular book I had was In Het Donker – In the Darkness. As you can see below, the format of the lines is definitely different than a regular book, with short lines that can’t even really be called paragraphs:

The book was about 65 pages long, but as you can see there wasn’t much text per page. Some of the pages were grouped with half a picture, and some of the pages were entirely a picture with no text. I managed to finish the entire book in about an hour and a half or so.

This particular book was rather formulaic in its vampire theme, but nonetheless I enjoyed reading it. I used the Google Translate app and the Dict Box app which has multiple dictionaries for NL-EN and EN-NL. You can also customize which dictionaries show up (I quickly removed the image dictionary as it was only for English words).

Categories: Apps, Reading | Tags: Books, Dutch language, Libraries | 5 Comments

Makkelijk lezen (Of: Bibliotheek Den Haag)

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Niki

Easier Reading (Or: The Hague Library)

So my latest adventure in the last two days was visiting the central library of the Hague. I went there yesterday with Marco’s mother as I had read that they had a Nederlands leren section on the fourth floor. (That’s really the 5th floor for us Americans.)

When we arrived on the fourth floor we found the taal section (languages / 800’s) section fairly easily. As Marco’s mother also likes to practice her English, we went to the Engels section first. Near the beginning of the English section we found some thin books which were about various classics (Treasure Island, Dickens, etc) or about certain themes. She took a book with five Canterbury Tales and a book on short ghost/scary stories.

After that we proceeded to the Dutch section, which was easily the largest section (probably 6 or 7 times the books that English had). But I found it rather frustrating to not be able to read the titles easily, and I also found it frustrating to have all the books mixed together and have academic (read: stuffy, hard to read books) on the Dutch language next to books about grammar. So eventually I gave up for the day and told her I would return tomorrow (that is today).

I returned to same place today on my own, but did not have much luck at all. As I was leaving, I took a bit of a detour and stopped to read the directional signs that were placed near the escalators. As I turned around, I realized that I had missed the Nederlands leren section completely, and really was in the wrong place. It’s right next to the escalators, near the windows. It’s quite possible I had found the section previously with Marco but just forgot about it, as I had not visited the library in a year and a half.

The Nederlands leren section does seem more my speed – they have a lot of course books, exam books (NT2, Kennis samenleving, etc) and of course fiction books to read. The fiction books included a LOT of picture books and etc for the basic level, but also thankfully some harder books that were a bit longer.

Apparently they are marked as “makkelijk lezen” or easier reading. So the theme is a bit more adult (sometimes) than the amount of pages would suggest.

Categories: Reading | Tags: Books, Dutch language, Libraries | Leave a comment

Translations (Or: Facebook and Dutch statuses)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Niki

Over the last few days, it seems I have found another benefit to reading Dutch – suddenly I find that I can translate (most) Facebook status updates to some degree. I have a handful of Marco’s relatives on my friends list, so the amount of Dutch on my Facebook page is slowly creeping up.

Previously I found it a bit hard to log into Facebook and see lots of Dutch, as it just reminded me that I was moving in 7-8 months and still hadn’t gotten as far with the language as I wanted. I first started staring at Dutch books about two years ago, after Marco gave me some Dutch instructional texts. When you do not know the language, it is like staring into an unforgiving wall. Good luck.

The last few days have been a lot better, however. Yesterday was the first day where I was able to translate a decent-sized update completely by myself (and then doublecheck it, of course!) And that begs the question: how long has Facebook had a built-in translate option, anyway?

Of course, I can’t tell you what each and every word means yet, but I get the overall concept behind the sentences. It’s somewhere around picking out the important words, plus understanding some of the prepositions. That’s what gets me through!

Categories: Learning Dutch, Reading | Tags: Dutch language | 3 Comments

Unexpected surprises (Or: Dutch kids’ books)

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Niki

A few pages into the aforementioned Dutch children’s book, I was reading along and found something slightly unexpected, at least for a kid’s book. Look at the first paragraph. Two bullies (having been thwarted by the victim’s older brother) jump on their bikes and bike away. Once they get a safe distance away, they turn around and give their retort.

Basically their response is Vuile hufter! (dirty bastard!). And then it says terwijl ze hun middelvinger opsteken. … (while they raised their middle fingers.) They then go on to talk about the kid’s dirty filthy clothes.

A bit unexpected for a book written for 10 year olds (or so). Though I realized a while ago that Americans tend to be a bit more… reserved in some instances. It was interesting to work at the public library shortly after And Tango Makes Three was published. This book is about two male penguins who seemed to have a relationship, and exhibited nesting tendencies. Eventually they were given an egg to “mother” and they did a great job of it. (Of course, penguins tend to have different sexual habits, and eventually they “broke up” when one of them doted on a female penguin.)

Someone in town complained about the book being in the picture book section, so all copies were moved to the parenting section. Though I can understand this – parents like to let the children roam and pick out what they want to read. Unknowingly bringing that book home could lead to some awkward discussions before the parent wants to bring them up.

But in the Dutch book – it’s not the only example of “real world” actions of kids that age. On page 1 the older sister was admonishing her brother to keep up when he whined he couldn’t get up the hill*: “niet lullen maar fietsen!’ which is basically “less bs’ing, more biking!”.

* = must have been man-made, since I haven’t seen any hills yet!

But hey, at least it makes the book more interesting to read. I am just used to children’s books being slightly more censored. I was reading a lot of them between 2006-2007 for the library job so I don’t think I am THAT out of touch.

Categories: Culture, Learning Dutch, Reading | Tags: Dutch language | 9 Comments

Study sessions (Or: Reading Dutch over videochats)

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Niki

Number of days (straight) I have studied Dutch: 6.

The Dutch learning streak is going well! Today’s fun: reading the previously mentioned children’s book to Marco, page 1, over MSN videochat. I was decent at it, though of course my pronunciation needs improvement. Lots of improvement…

He helped me with some words I didn’t know (and that the small Dutch-English dictionary didn’t have). It’s baby steps, but so far I have read 3 pages of the book. I guess it doesn’t help that I read a page at the end of the night, around 11PM or so. I am usually pretty tired by then. Although usually earlier in the night I am studying over at dutchgrammar.com.

Here are two random blog posts I want to highlight today:

Resources for Learning Dutch, by Floating in Dreams

Expat blogs and other expat info, by Adventures in Expat Land