Fourth lesson by ROC Mondriaan. I’m starting to make some stupid mistakes, which of course I find really annoying. With this type of endeavor I want to be perfect. Oh, and did I mention that the wedding vows we are telling each other will be in Dutch? Yeah, I’m crazy. But I’ll come armed with note cards! (Thankfully I have pretty understanding parents who are willing to listen and consult the translation we provide as needed…)

There were a few choices quotes from the teacher today:

Schrijven is blijven. Niet schrijven is vergeten.

Loosely translated: Writing is remembering (lit: staying). Not writing is forgetting.

Als je het niet weet, kies de.

Translated: If you don’t know it [whether to use ‘het’ or ‘de’ before nouns], choose ‘de’. 80% of Dutch nouns take ‘de’, whereas only 20% take het.

Interestingly, ‘de’ is for both masculine and feminine nouns. Back in the day there was a 3rd form for feminine nouns, but they were since consolidated into the same category as masculine. ‘het’ is actually for neutral nouns like professions, diminutives, metals, and other various things.

We then did some exercises where we switched around the word order, similar to Monday’s class:

Morgen ga ik met mijn kinderen voor het eerst naar de kinderopvang.

Tomorrow go I (:p) with my kids voor the first [time] to [the] daycare.

Ik ga morgen met mijn kinderen voor het eerst naar de kinderopvang.

I go tomorrow with my kids for the first [time[ to [the] daycare.

The main thing is that the verb stays in the first or second position… morgen ik ga is wrong as ‘ga’ is in the third position, but it’s a common mistake.

You can actually put phrases into the first position (thus, it is not limited to just one word). It mainly just changes the emphasis of the sentence.

Met mijn kinderen ga ik morgen voor het eerst naar de kinderopvang.

The subject and the verb always stick together (in simple sentences anyway). If the time element (morgen, tomorrow) is not in the first position it usually follows right after the subject, as it did in the last example.

One week to go until the wedding… Crazy times ahead!

Last night was another class by ROC Mondriaan. The good news is hopefully we figured out what classroom(s) we are going to be in permanently – one classroom for Monday and another for Wednesday. We had the same teacher as last Monday and she did not mention us having a different teacher next Monday so perhaps she is permanently our teacher for that day.

I think one of the more amusing things about this class is everyone wants to answer, even if the teacher calls on one person. They seem pretty adamant about answering.

The course itself is still a bit sluggish – it starts at 6:45 but we really didn’t begin until 7:05PM. In the end there were 15 people there, +1 for the mother who brought her 10 year old son. He was cute, quiet and respectful though. One thing he said (as we were in the family chapter…):

verliefd (in love)

verloofd (engaged)

getrouwd (married)

The main thing that we covered in the lesson was spelling for a few different instances. Amusingly, the 10 year old boy said he learned that last year when he was in groep vijf (group 5/age 9). Two rules we learned are:

If you have one vowel between two consonants for a singular noun, then in the plural you double the consonant before adding the traditional -en ending.

de bom -> de bommen (the bomb)

de kat -> de katten (the cat)

de kip -> de kippen (the chicken)

If you have two vowels between two consonants for a singular noun, then in the plural you remove one vowel.

de muur -> de muren (the wall)

het haar -> de haren (the hare)

de peer -> de peren (the pear)

Of course, there are always exceptions! Although I am a fan of grammar, it seems like I never stared at these rules too much, instead relying on memorizing and going by what ‘looks right’. But it’s interesting to have the rules somewhere in the back of my head now.

After that, we covered the word order of sentences — where do the subject and verb go in various situations — although that is old news to me.  That is thanks to the previous class and Marco’s hard work constantly saying “word order” “word order” “word order!” these last months.

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!