Back to hitting the books!

Last night our Dutch teacher had a pretty good explanation for what happens when you learn Dutch – or any other language for that matter. The progress isn’t always as fast as it was in the beginning…

The above photo is quite true. Sometimes at work I have “bad days” (nothing that comes out of my mouth seems to make sense to the library customer!) and then there are “good days” (when I am actually able to articulate myself “on the fly” as it were – or quickly and effortlessly). Work is the hardest place to speak Dutch, because I never know what the other person is going to want or ask. In other situations with family and friends it is much more relaxed.

We also learned a few new vocabulary words (in a section about parents buying mobile phones for their children):

gloednieuw – pas gekocht, helemaal nieuw. Something you just bought, completely new.

peperduur = vroeger kwam peper van Azië en het was heel duur. In the past pepper came from Asia at a terribly expensive price. Now something can be not just duur (expensive) but can also be peperduur.

We also looked at writing a formal letter, something I learned in my last class at Volksuniversiteit, though practice never hurt anyone. One thing I did learn though is this phrase:

Bij voorbaat dank voor uw … Thanks in advance for your…

antwoord / reactie / medewerking … answer, reaction, consideration/participation

Or a few other ways to say you’re waiting for their reply:

Ik hoor het graag van u. I hear it gladly from you.

Kunt u mij snel een reactie sturen? Can you send a reaction quickly?

Ik wacht op uw antwoord/reactie. I wait for your answer/reaction.

NOTE: Next week is herfstvakantie (fall vacation), so there will be no class related blog posts.

Like all languages, Dutch steals from other languages. Sometimes they prefer to use English words in place of Dutch words, especially with newer technology (internet, websites, and etc). They tend to pronounce these words with an English pronunciation. I should be happy right? English is my native language – sounds easy for me!

Except that it’s not that easy. I find it quite difficult to switch pronunciations mid-sentence. Things like journalist do not take the usual Dutch pronunciation for the j (making it sound more like yer-na-list) but rather keep the English j. We had the word journalist as one of our vocabulary words in Wednesday’s class. Case in point: today is Friday so when I went to the Albert Heijn I told the cashier Fijne weekend! (happy weekend) however I said weekend with a Dutch accent and then corrected myself. We had a good laugh.

In Dutch the work week is spelled the same but pronunciation is closer to the English word ‘wake’, just with a bit more English ‘v’ than ‘w’. (Plural: weken, pronounced like vay-ken). But for some bizarre reason the Dutch like to pronounce weekend as … the English word ‘weekend’. Hmm.

Other things we discussed in class: ooit / nooit. Ever / never. The two usual uses:

Ik wil nooit een konijn hebben. (I never want to have a rabbit.)
Heb je ooit chinees gegeten? (Have you ever eaten Chinese?)

Not too unexpected there. In this case ooit translates to ‘ever’. But it can also translate to ‘once’ (although you can generally use other Dutch words like vroeger.)

Deze deur was ooit blauw. (This door was once blue.)
Deze deur was vroeger blauw. (This door was earlier blue.)

Finally, you can also use ooit a third way, which I learned in class. The Dutch also use ooit to point to the future – though the point is not known.

Ooit zal ik naar Duitsland gaan. (‘Sometime in the future’ I will go to Germany.)

Or the slightly more depressing Ooit zal ik je weer zien, which is apparently a Dutch song. Sometime I will see you again.

You might be able to guess what voorzetsels are if I use the other common Dutch word for them: preposities. 

That’s right. It’s time to talk about the evil prepositions that lurk within any language. Obviously they are not that evil in English, because it’s my moedertaal (literally: mother language). But in Dutch… oh no. Run!

It’s also made more fun by the fact that you have vaste or fixed prepositions. That means that some verbs/expressions always take the same preposition. My first memorable experience with prepositions after moving here was which one to use after wachten, or ‘to wait’. In English the expression is ‘to wait for’. So naturally one would assume you can say Ik wacht voor de bus.

But that means that you will see this coming at you:

That’s right… it means you’re waiting (literally) before the bus, in the street. Hmph. Whereas English has two words – ‘before’ and ‘for’ – there is only voor in Dutch.

(While I was looking for a good image, I can across this article about a woman who missed a bus and decided to catch up with it at the next red traffic light. She lay down in front of it until the driver let her on…)

If you want a rather exhaustive list of fixed prepositions, you can look at Dutch Grammar (it also includes English translations).

Some important ones include:

kijken naar (to look at)
luister naar (to listen to)
bang zijn voor (to be afraid of – zijn is ‘to be’)
denken aan (to think about)
houden van (to love – ik hou van jou – I love you!)
praten over (to talk about)
praten tegen (to talk to [someone])
praten met (to talk with [someone])
wachten op (to wait for *wink*)

Two days ago Wednesday was the 12th class by ROC Mondriaan. I must admit that that is another example of something that is simpler to say in Dutch – eergisteren means ‘the day before yesterday’ and overmorgen means ‘the day after tomorrow’. Just like the movie…

Anyway, one random thing we learned on Wednesday was the difference between even, effe, en ff.

Even = (a-ven, with a hard a) is hard to translate at times. It’s generally used to make commands or statements softer/politer. And probably other usages I don’t know yet. It’s harder for non-Dutchies to grasp.

Effe = street version of the same word. Pronounced f-fa (short a).

ff = even shorter version used for texting. Yep, they abbreviate a four letter word into a two letter word. (And English is just as guilty of that.)

We had another writing exercise. This time about the sports that we like or don’t like, and whether we participate in sports as well. (I like to watch sports on tv. But I definitely don’t participate in any.)

Amusingly this chapter was called media en comunicatie (media and communication) and the chapter opened with a brief story from a librarian. Because of my background in libraries, the teacher asked me to talk a little bit about libraries in general and also read the brief story. I did pretty well with the pronunciation – luckily there were not too many annoying words in the text.

We found out that we have a test for synonyms on Wednesday. Couple that with the test on Monday and I suddenly have something to study for. Should be fun… But it is getting a bit more interesting now, as we get random information that isn’t found in the textbook itself. So it is going well.