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.

In this Dutch class we randomly looked at the vowel changes that occur in Dutch when a verb changes from the present tense to the simple past and to the present perfect. Some groups of irregular verbs can be studied as groups because their vowels change in a predictable pattern. For example, ij in the present tense, ee in the simple past, and e in the present perfect.

(to receive) krijgen -> kreeg -> gekregen

(to write) schrijven -> schreef -> geschreven

(to stay) blijven -> bleef -> gebleven

(to iron) strijken -> streek -> gestreken

(to drive) rijden -> reed -> gereden

At some point earlier this year I was reading something that made me realize the exact same phenomenon occurs in the English language as well. Of course, these examples are listed as the “craziest verb changes” on the linked page.

i -> a -> u

beginnen  to begin -> began -> begun
drinken  to drink -> drank -> drunk
bellen  to ring -> rang -> rung
zingen  to sing -> sang -> sung
springen to spring -> sprang -> sprung
zwemmen to swim -> swam -> swum

In other news, on Monday we have a test for chapters 1 through 3. Nothing major – it’s mainly for us to see where we are at and the teacher to see where we are at.

Here are the notes that I had taken:

I kept the photo a bit larger so my crazy handwriting could actually be deciphered. One nice thing I have noticed is that I tend to write most of my notes in Dutch these days, with the exception of word definitions. I try to write those in Dutch, but sometimes English is much simpler and quicker.

The one thing I haven’t quite got the hand of is the abbreviation for page. While Dutch use both pagina and bladzijde to mean ‘page’, they tend to use the latter more often and thus use ‘blz’ for the abbreviation. My English habits of ‘pg. #’ die hard, it seems.

Until next time!

One of the random things we learned in class last night was the difference between leuk and gezellig. While leak can translate to ‘fun’, gezellig is a bit harder to translate. The usual translation given is ‘cozy’, especially in terms of warm feelings.

He said the difference between leuk and gezellig is that something gezellig can only be done with another person, not by yourself. Leuk is generally something you yourself find fun, though it can also be said of a group.

Another nice thing about the Wednesday night class is sometimes we do the exercises more than one time. While I don’t really need the help (I’m not kidding – this class is basically 95% review for me), it is nice for the other students. For example, last night we repeated the same exercise three times. The first time was just to state the answers. The second time was to find the verbs and circle them, and explain that if the verb was plural, the subject also needed to be plural (which for some students is a helpful trick to find the subject). The third and last time was to switch both the subject and the verb into plural or single – the opposite of what the sentence was originally.

Another interesting side note that he had was over the word nogal which translates to ‘rather’ in English. He then compared that to other, similar words.

Het is een beetje duur. Ik koop het. It’s a little expensive. I (will) buy it.

Het is nogal duur. Misschien koop ik het. It’s rather expensive. I might buy it.

Het is heel (erg) duur. Ik koop ik niet. It’s very expensive. I will not buy it.

He is also a fan of synonyms  (just ask Marco who had to look over my homework ;)).  The teacher mentioned that a synonym for ‘nogal’ is ‘tamelijk’.

So although the classes are mostly review, I do learn a lot of random things, and I do think it is helping improve my vocabulary.