The class seems to be shrinking again. Last night we only had 11, and one of those left at the break due to a headache. The weather is getting good – light jacket weather, but you didn’t even have to close it at night while waiting for the bus. It is definitely “spring fever” – no one seems to be able to concentrate on much. I heard a lot of English thrown in by the other students – Hoe is het met de transport? (How is it with the transport?, complete with “Hoe” pronounced as the English “how”) You could say instead: Hoe is het openbaar vervoer? or How is the public transportation?)

One of the students brought in the A1 test (she had the same teacher for that class as well) and the format didn’t seem that no annoying. No speaking, which is in theory good for me but not in reality. Ik moet meer Nederlands praten! (I must speak more Dutch).

We covered almost two sections yesterday (10B and 10C), so I am now only a week ahead (11A). That’s fine with me.  A few things that we learned today included materials (leer = leather, plastic = plastic, hout = wood, and etc).

muur van steen = a wall (made) of stone
een stenen muur = a stone wall

So when you put the material before the object (acting as an adjective), than you add -en to the word. (The number of e’s change to keep the pronunciation the same.) Leer = leren (leather), hout = houten (wood, wooden), wol = wollen (wool, woolen. The l doubles to keep the pronunciation of the ‘o’ the same.)

Another thing we learned was afmeting, or dimensions. Admittedly I complained to Marco that I don’t even care about this in English, much less a different language. The most important thing to keep in mind is meter (meter) usually stays singular, and is pronounced differently than English (may-ter) due to the first e not being enclosed by a consonant (me-ter, as there’s no doubling of the t… met-ter). But that’s boring for most folks!

Afmeting =

3m bij 5m = 15 vierkante meter (3 meters by 5 meters equals 15 square meters)

Also, where we usually use a period, they use a comma, and vice versa.

2,5m bij 4m = 12 vierkante meter

6.200 = zesduizend tweehonderd (six thousand and two hundred)

6,47%

I am not sure if I will ever get used to writing commas and periods properly!

Next week there is no class due to Koninginnedag. The next class is May 7th.

Tot dan!

(until then)

Last night I had my 8th Dutch lesson at the Volkuniversiteit (A2 level). This lesson seemed a bit “off” — as in, it wasn’t that good. Neither the person to my right nor the person to my left did their homework and it seemed to be the same for most of the people in the class. Technically I am a few lessons ahead already, as we did 9C and 10A today, and I’ve already finished the homework through 10B.

Perhaps it is the warmer weather – it is harder to concentrate on the homework and during the class itself. I can definitely tell that it stays lighter outside longer. We didn’t turn the classroom lights on until almost 9PM due to ample light from outside.

The main grammatical thing that we learned was Er, in its simplest form. (There are many uses of Er that are a lot harder to explain. I don’t know all of them.) This version simply translates to “there”. So:

Er is een… There is a...

Er zijn… There are…

Er is geen zolder. There is no attic.

Er zijn geen winkels in de buurt. There are no shops in the neighborhood.

So it follows English pretty closely. The most surprising thing is that it didn’t appear in the textbook until now — I’ve been using it in Dutch speech for some months already, and I suspect most of my classmates have as well.

One random thing I heard the professor mutter quietly under her breath was Waarom zijn bananen krom? (Why are bananas curved?) Unfortunately I forget why she said it. I asked Marco and he said this is a rhetorical question you ask when there really isn’t an answer that can be given. She definitely seemed a bit more exasperated with the class in general this week.

One thing that was mentioned a lot in today’s chapter was the song A beetje verliefd (A little love) by Andre Hazes, a Dutch singer who passed away in 2004. It’s one of those songs that almost everyone in the country knows, even if they don’t care for it. It’s classified as a Smartlap (tearjerker). YouTube with Dutch Lyrics. Marco hates the music but wanted to tell you that that singer has an Amsterdam accent, as does 90% of the Smartlappen singers.

Another thing that was mentioned randomly was Koetjes en kalfjes (literal translation = cows and calfs, actual translation = small talk). Perhaps back in the day when there was even more farmland than there is now,  small talk did refer to how the animals were doing. Maybe!