Eerst, het verhaal in Nederlands:

Op donderdag had ik mijn les bij Mondriaan. We hadden een oefening met het liedje ‘Centraal Station’ bij Guus Meeuwis en Vagant. Eén van de regels was “een potloodventer in een donkere hoek”. De lerares heeft gevraagd: “Weet iemand wat potloodventer betekent?” Een student weet het al! Zij heeft het laten zien met haar handen (zij kon het niet met woorden uitleggen), maar iedereen was nog steeds een beetje in de war. Toen legde de lerares het uit – het is een exhibitionist – en de lerares heeft haar gevraagd: hoe weet je dat woord? De student heeft gezegd “van mijn schoonmoeder”. Een student vroeg, verbaasd, “Jouw schoonmoeder was een potloodventer?” “Nee!” Iedereen moest echt hard lachen. We hebben een beetje meer over het woord gepraat, misschien drie of vier minuten. Nadat heeft de lerares gezegd “Oké, dat is genoeg van dat thema.” Maar helaas heeft zij de volgende regels van het liedje gezegd – “Maar ik zie je nog voor me, als ik mijn ogen sluit” – toen moest iedereen weer om lachen.

And now in English:

On Thursday I had my lesson by Mondriaan. We had an exercise where we must listen to a song, “Centraal Station” by Guus Meeuwis and Vagant. One of the lines was “an exhibitionist in a dark corner”. The teacher asked if anyone knew what the word meant. One student actually knew it! She demonstrated with her hands (she couldn’t explain it in words), but everyone was still a bit confused. The teacher explained what it meant – exhibitionist / someone who exposes themselves – and after asked her how she knew the word. The student said “from my mother-in-law”. A student asked, surprised: “Your mother-in-law was an exhibitionist?” “No!” Everyone just had to laugh. We talked about the meaning of the word for a few more minutes, and afterwards the teacher said “Okay, enough from that theme.” Unfortunately she then said the next few lines from the song out loud, to go over them. They were “but I still see you before me, as I close my eyes”. Everyone laughed again… Good times.

That was the highlight of the lesson – otherwise we just reviewed grammar (the imperfect/simple past – zij danste – she danced) and did an exercise or two with that. I won’t cover that here (I have before) but here are three rules for when you can use the imperfect:

1. To describe special events in the past when the attention of the listener is already in the past. Het was afgelopen week erg druk in de stad. It was very busy last week in the city.

2. Routines / commonly done things in the past. Vroeger fietsten we altijd naar school. Back then we always biked together to school.

3. Actions that took place at the same time in the past. Erst namen we de trein naar Berlijn en daar namen we een taxi naar ons hotel. First we took a train to Berlin and there we took a taxi to our hotel.

If you’re talking about more recent events, as in something that happened in the last few days, it’s usually better to use the past perfect. (Ik heb gedanst – I have danced), at least, that’s what my textbook says. I’m guilty of breaking that rule… I am a bit shaky on when to use the simple past and past perfect.

Last night’s lesson was a bit varied due to the various things that we worked on. First off, the teacher had us review the imperatief/gebiendende wijs (imperative in English – giving commands).

To use the imperative you generally use the stam or the ik vorm. The verb always comes first. Further, there is no subject (unless you are using the more polite u [you]). If you are using that form, than you have to conjugate the verb accordingly.

Ga zitten! Luister! Hou je mond! (Sit down! Listen! Stop talking!)
Gaat u zitten! Luistert u! Houdt uw mond! (Some of these seem a bit strange in the polite u form, of course). You can also use even and/or maar to make the command a bit more friendly. Luister even! sounds friendlier than Luister!

Due to a random exercise in the book we also briefly learned about the political parties in the Netherlands but a) I don’t know much about them b) I am definitely not into politics. Though I did find it funny that the teacher said she really didn’t discuss politics in class, and then got sucked into a discussion anyway until she broke it off again…

We also took a look at the differences in social class in The Hague. You have two different names for people who live in The Hague. The dividing line or border can be found in the Laan van Meerdervoort, which is the longest avenue in the Netherlands (and also by coincidence where I bought my wedding dress!). If you live “above” this street you live on the rich side of town and are called a Hagenaar. If you live “below” this street you live on the poor side of town and are called a Hagenees. If you believe in such a thing.

The last thing we learned was new to me – another way how to categorize things. Here is an example:

Min grootste ergernis is … (My biggest irritation is)

Mijn op een na grootste ergernis is … (My second biggest irritation is)

Mijn op twee na grootste ergernis is … (My third biggest irritation is)

I must admit it is kind of weird to use “op een na” (een = one) for something that actually translates as “second”. Hmmm.

Last night’s lesson covered relative pronouns. Some of which is easy (if you’re a native English speaker) and some of which is not nearly as easy unless you’re a native speaker of Dutch. Or German maybe. Quick and dirty summary: relative pronouns give extra information about a noun (person, place or thing).

Easy (just requires knowing whether the noun is de or het):

De man die daar loopt is mijn broer. The man that walks there is my brother. 1) man is ‘de’ 2) thus you use ‘die’. 3) extra information: that walks there. Technically it might be better to say ‘who walks there’, but that’s another topic.

Het huis dat daar staat is van mij. The house that stands there is mine. 1) huis is ‘het’ 2) thus you use ‘dat’ 3) extra information: that stands there.

Less than easy? When prepositions decide to get involved. Evil things. When that happens you have two different possible constructions — at least for now — waar + prepositie and prepositie + wie -> where + preposition (objects) and preposition + who (people).

Example with zien (to see) and kijken naar (to look at).

De televisie die ik zie is al 10 jaar oud. The television that I see is already 10 years old. There’s no preposition there, so you can use die.

But: De televisie waarnaar ik kijk is al 10 jaar oud. The television that I look at is already 10 years old. The preposition forces the use of waar rather than die. You can also split up waarnaar – it’s actually a bit more common to do so. De televisie waar ik naar kijk is al 10 jaar oud.

And finally: preposition + wie.

Hij is getrouwd met de vrouw van wie hij al tien jaar houdt. He is married to the woman that he (already) loved for 10 years. Dutch is a bit tricky here since the phrase for expressing love is “houden van”. See also: ik hou van jou, or I love you. So there is a preposition there that you would not have expected if you spoke English.

Of course, this little grammar exercise ignores one glaring problem: it’s fine to realize why something is the way it is but until you learn the rules for fixed prepositions or separable verbs (prepositions with verbs like opstaan — or ‘stand up’ — that can separate) you will not be able to do it naturally. So it really is a matter of practice, practice, practice…

I promise to write a non-grammar filled post next time. Hopefully!

There was not much new grammar for this lesson (so at least Marco can rejoice that he does not have to read yet another grammar-filled entry). One thing that the De Finale textbook has is a grammar section at the back of the book. The teacher decided to go through it step by step, which meant starting with the present tense. The review of the verb rules wasn’t that hard – and then after we had to do an exercise which seemed full of inversion (where the verb comes before the subject).

I found it a lot of fun, but then I never claimed to be anything less than a grammar geek…

You would see a sentence. Your task would be to re-write the sentence, filling in the provided verbs 1) in the right part of the sentence 2) in the right form. Example:

(verliezen, hebben) Hij vaak, maar gelukkig hij toch veel plezier in het voetballen.

Translating that gibberish into English, you get:
(to lose, to have) He often, but happily he still a lot of pleasure in soccer.

(verliezen, hebben) Hij verliest vaak, maar gelukkig heeft hij toch veel plezier in het voetballen.
He loses often, but happily he still takes a lot of pleasure in soccer. (though ‘heeft’ directly translated would be ‘has’).

I did make two mistakes – conjugated one verb wrong (simple mistake) and I didn’t know that veel (a lot) is singular.  Though it does seem to be a murky question in English as well.

We also learned a few more rules for de and het words. As already mentioned earlier in this blog, words ending in -tie, -ing, -heid and -teit are always de words. Today we learned that names of flowers, trees, and plants are always de words:

rose and lilac: de roos, de lila
oak tree: de eik boom

There was rain on the way to my class on Thursday night, though it has been raining on and off most of the week it seems. (Thankfully the only “snow” Marco and I have seen this winter the fake snow — made of tiny, foamy bubbles — that descended on us at Disneyland Paris to mark the Christmas season. Though who knows, we might be getting real snow sooner rather than later.)

One interesting thing about The Hague – a lot of the public bike paths and walking areas dry pretty fast. The bike paths dry the quickest. That’s in comparison to our inner courtyard for our apartment, which stays wet all day even if it hasn’t rained since the morning. So of course, everything on the walk home was pretty dry by the time I got out of class 3 hours later.

Thursday’s lesson in general was pretty good. A lot of it seems to be review at this point, which makes sense, but sometimes there is something completely new. On Thursday we learned about bijwoorden. or adverbs in English. You start learning adverbs in your very first Dutch course, but they aren’t called adverbs and they don’t throw the harder ones at you like they are doing now. And I must say, adverbs are probably one of the things that still give me a bit of trouble in English from time to time.

Unfortunately each word seems to have their own rule on where to go in the sentence – some of them have to start the main clause, while some of them can come before or after the verb (thus, 1st or 3rd place).

3rd place, adjective, anders: De school is anders dan vorig jaar.
The school is different than last year.
1st place, adverb, anders: Ik moet me haasten, anders zal ik laat zijn.
I must hurry (myself), otherwise I will be late.

Thus the placement of the word can also dictate what type it is (adjective or adverb). Crazy! I learned anders in both the adjective and adverb sense listening to others talk – on tv or around me – not from a book. I didn’t know the rule (and usually I do beforehand). Because of this I did not realize the word order was backwards from English:

…anders zal ik laat zijn. The verb “zal” (will) comes before “ik” (I), thus it is more like “otherwise will I …” But because I learned it from listening to others, and not from a book, I had no trouble ignoring that issue.

Last week, we had the adverb ook al at the beginning of a sentence. I was very confused by this, as 1) it is two words, not one. 2) this would require the verb to come directly after, as the verb must be in 1st or 2nd place, which created interesting word order. If only I had remembered anders…

Ook al ging ik naar Amsterdam, ik kon haar niet vinden.
Even though I went to Amsterdam, I couldn’t find her.

So it was an interesting class, that’s for sure… but even I don’t understand it all. But it is another piece to put in the grammar puzzle.

Last night was the third lesson at ROC Mondriaan. Time seemed to go slower… but there are always new things to learn. One of the things we covered today was conjunctions. You have two types – coordinating (where the word order doesn’t change) and subordinating (where the word order undergoes a change). The names make sense – coordinating implies that the two parts of the sentence are equal. Subordinating implies that one part of the sentence is less than the other. This effect is present in both English and Dutch. Dutch just takes it a step further and changes the word order for the lesser clause.

Coordinating: en (and), maar (but), of (if), want (because), dus (thus)

Subordinating: almost every other conjunction. This implies that word order changes frequently in this language! There were a few that I did not already know by heart:

mits = alleen als = provided that
tenzij = maar niet als = unless
aangezien = because

You can see more examples at learndutch.nu (random Google search!)

And then there is the writing exercises… I don’t mind them – writing Dutch isn’t terribly difficult. The teacher does have an interesting system of corrections. First, we are required to skip every other line, leaving a blank line in between for corrections. She then uses a shorthand for corrections, generally saying where the problem is but not *what* it is. When she returns the paper we are required to correct it (with either a different color pen or pencil, depending on what we used the first time) and hand it back in.

For my first assignment there were only two errors – one verb conjugated wrong and one wrong word. (I wrote that prices would be getting larger, when ‘higher’ or ‘more expensive’ would be better. That one took a few minutes to figure out!)