Unilang Language Learning Month - Dutch

[Junesun]

This thread is for all those who have decided to learn some Dutch for the first Ulalemo.
Here you can:
- tell the other participants what your level is, which course you'll be using and what goal you have set yourself (see this thread for suggested goals)
- keep others informed of the progress you make and your experiences
- talk about learning Dutch
- share mnemonics, learning techniques and exercises you found/created
- debate the pros & cons of the courses offered
- form learning groups
- make appointments for discussing/studying Dutch with fellow participants in a chat
- ask for help from native speakers and advanced learners (e. g. explanations, examples, corrections)

If you have something to share that would also benefit future learners of Dutch or other languages, for example an explanation or a tip, please take the time to create a wiki page about it, link it with related wiki pages and also post the URL here. Creating exercises for everybody's use is also highly encouraged and if you're not sure whether the exercise you created is 100% accurate, I'm sure that native speakers or advanced learners will be happy to check it.

Courses and supplementary material for learning Dutch:
http://www.taalthuis.com/ - Taalthuis (courses for beginners and intermediate learners)
http://www.geocities.com/willemfh/stamboom/dutch/index.html - Dutch in 10 lessons
http://www.botsjeh.cistron.nl/dutch/main.htm - introduction to the Dutch language
http://www.learndutch.org - learn Dutch (course)
http://www.speakdutch.nl - speak Dutch (course)
http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~kl044 - Dutch course for beginners, exclusively in Dutch
http://proto2.thinkquest.nl/~klc043 - Dutch course for intermediate learners, exclusively in Dutch
http://www.nber.org/~lfriedl/dutch - integral Dutch course
http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/non/welkom - Dutch course in German
http://www.geocities.com/athens/2282/holl.html - Dutch course in Russian
http://www.interglot.com - Dutch-English online dictionary
http://www.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/woordenboek.cgi - Dutch-German online dictionary

Official list of participants:
1. Junesun
2. reflexsilver86
3. bodhisatva
4. mojka
5. Car
6. FNORD, King of Men
7. Rob P
8. skye
9. Geist
10. Ehlana
11. Pierrick18
12. Vinaok
13. Lumijaguaari
14. Myxomatosian
15. Phreaker
16. bogororo
17. ümit
18. JackFrost
19. Cro Magnon
20. Daniel
21. Stephanie
22. Kyr
23. svenska84
24. Fénix
25. Ericn378
26. Schalke81!!!
27. DynaEmu
28. Kanadaeestlane
29. Meowth
30. Melime
31. choriste

Have fun!

[proycon]

The UniLang-MG Basic Wordlist for dutch can be found here


We also have a Basic Course for Beginners, consisting of 10 lessons:

http://www.unilang.org/main/bylanguage.php?lng=nl

[Junesun]

Hallo!

I decided to learn Dutch because I live only about 20km from the border and I often see Dutch people who can speak German very well, yet I only know "Hoe gaat het ermee?" and "Tot ziens!" (spelling?) in their language. Many people around here are in a similar situation and Dutch also isn't commonly taught at school, which is really a shame.

I will try to achieve the "Obsessee" level, since I already understand a lot of words - Dutch is really very similar to German, so it should be manageable. However, I'm not really sure how much I can do, because it's the first time ever I will pay attention to how much I learn in a given amount of time, and also because I will spend a lot of time doing volunteer work for the World Games from July 12th to July 23rd. I don't know what effect it will have - either I'll be too busy to study much then, or I'll be able to practise a lot with the Dutch teams and visitors.

For a start, I will choose the German course over any of the English ones. It contains audio files, which will hopefully help me to learn the considerable differences in accent between Dutch and German, and it probably won't give long explanations of concepts familiar to Germans. I might switch to an English course once I know the basics however.

[Sarabi]

Goedemiddag! Since no one else is posting here, I'll go ahead...

I'm really into Romanian right now and have a lot of other stuff to do (not to mention starting Russian in August), so I've decided to just get acquainted with the language and learn a few measely words.

I'm using this program I downloaded called Before You Know It Lite. The free version... It has some basic words and a lot of high quality sound files, plus flashcards. If anyone's interested, you can check out http://www.byki.com ...

So, here's what I learned today ...
nul, een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, elf...

Yes, I'm good.

I was having trouble pronouncing that "negen," so I had to think of the g as a French r.

[Kyr]

This similarity to German is very helpful to me too...

I am studying now Proycon's lessons; after that I will jump to a "teach yourself" method I have bought many years before but never truely read...

btw the language seems to me "smoother" than German (at least this is my impression). I like it a lot...

[pierrick18]

Oh my! It's July today! Where did the time go? We are going out to eat tonight so I guess I will do double lessons tomorrow. The only Dutch I know is "Ik" so I am an absolute beginner.

[Kazimer]

Where did the time go? Summer vaction kills always makes me lose track of time.

Hey Queen Ehlana that program you suggested works great. Are you using the Dutch addon with all the other flash cards like the seasons, months, sample verbs, etc. Also if anyone has a palm pilot there's a free flashcard program at http://www.nosleep.net/ I think I might have already mentioned it somewhere. It's pretty good once figure out how to use it, too.

[mojka]

I'm totally begginer in dutch, I don't know anything I'll try to reach the Champion level (400 words or more, basic conversation etc.) in Ulalemo. I have bought Dutch course (Dutch in 1 month) and I will use online courses to increase my 'knowledge' But now I have no time, so I will start to learn on Monday/Tuesday. Wish me luck !

[Junesun]

Yesterday I only got to have a glance at the pronunciation, without being able to hear the sound samples because I didn't have RealPlayer, but today I worked on the pronunciation and the first lesson of the German course. I read the first text, added its vocabulary to my learning program, studied the articles and the conjugation for a bit and did some of the exercises.

I really like the variety of exercises offered and the amount. The use of recordings throughout the site is also great, but the speakers of the lesson texts talk too quickly, at least too quickly for me to try to imitate them. I'd love to have a sample text that is spoken very slowly, does anybody know one like that on the internet? Or could anybody record one? The closest I have is the song "Als de dag van toen" by Reinhard Mey, but he is German so I probably shouldn't imitate his accent.

The site unfortunately doesn't offer any wordlist for the lessons; instead, there's a malfunctioning dictionary search at the bottom of the page. I had to use the link to a Dutch-German online dictionary and take guesses at the dictionary form of words.

[Sarabi]

phreaker - Yes, it's quite professional (literally). And yes, I have those things you mentioned. Today, I went through ALL of the number list in flashcards... it took forever.

Proycon said the crew is working on a media center where people can upload sound files and so on, but from the sound of it, it won't be done this month.

I'll post links to the exercises:
hebben en zijn
voltooide deelwoorden
De bijvoeglijke naamwoorden

I'm looking at this site Acht Voor Taal, and it reminds me of how I learned to read English, in first grade. We got these reading folders, and the first one was like: "Help. Help. Help! Help! Help! Help." Then, on the next page, it said: "I help. I help. I help? I help!" And then: "I can help! Can I help?"

[choriste]

Greetings to all !
I have finally joined your community, after all these years, after having been goad.... erm....persuaded, by my dear friend Junesun to take the one-month personal Dutch challenge.
My name is JF, short for Jean-François. I am a 52-year-old French-Canadian male, living in Montréal, Québec.
My hobbies and activities are : choral singing, volunteer adult literacy tutoring, working out at the gym, gardening, chatting on Pal Talk, cycling, snowshoeing, camping, etc.
My musical interests are mainly centered around my passion for choral singing, i.e. sacred, Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic, although I have plenty of other contemporary pursuits as well. For example, I am a huge Beach Boys fan.
I speak French and English fluently. Germans keep telling me my German is very good, but, I tend not to believe them I am conversational in Esperanto. I know a smattering of demotic Greek.
My interest in the Dutch language developed recently, whilst playing CANTR II, a role-playing game. One of my characters strayed into a Dutch town and was suddenly exposed to a lot of Dutch. I noticed right away that my knowledge of German helped me to be able to guess a lot of what was going on, but not enough to fully understand. This teased my desire to find out more about this language.
I would be happy, after 30 days, to simply be able to construct some simple phrases correctly in Dutch. I am particularly interested in the similarities and differences between Dutch and German.
There you go. Hope you find some comment of interest in all this.
I am looking forward to working with you in the apprenticeship of Dutch.
best regards,
jf

[Meowth]

[quote="Junesun"] I read the first text, added its vocabulary to my learning program, studied the articles and the conjugation for a bit and did some of the exercises.

quote]


i must confess one of the biggest obstacles i got when i'm trying to learn a new language is vocabulary, how to manage correctly new words

i know flashcards and such things are very useful, but when you're trying to keep an eye every day on new words, and you see the initial list is longer and longer, you just can't memorize 'em easily later

so i've always wondered if there's any good software out there which can help me out on new vocabulary, no matter what language i'm learning (some of them are specialized in one language), and i see you talk about a "learning program"; can you please please please tell me more about ? or any advises ?

i am just excited to learn dutch ! but i don't wanna give up on 10 days after a few grammar and vocabulary

[Junesun]

Meowth:
I found that the method that works best for me is the Leitner one, i. e. involving several "drawers" for flashcards that ensure that vocabulary you know is practised less and less often, whereas vocabulary you don't know is practised every time. That means that the load of vocabulary will naturally decrease and, unlike with lists, you won't have to go over the 20 words of a lesson just to practise the one word you still can't remember. Another advantage of cards vs. lists is that the vocabulary will always be in random order - which prevents you from memorising the order of words, the words that come before and after the word that you can't remember.

I use a box with actual drawers and real cards for Chinese, but for other languages, which don't involve characters I have to draw out by hand, I use a program I developed myself, since I couldn't find any existing program with all the functionalities I expect; most of them don't even allow for the Leitner method. If you want, I can send it to you, but I must warn you that the current version is a work in progress - I decided to re-write large parts of the original program (which I had started when I was 14 or so) with new programming principles and techniques I learned.
As it is now, you can:
- add any language to practise with it, including languages with foreign alphabets like Greek (it even supports Keyman to facilitate changing between alphabets when entering vocabulary)
- add an unlimited amount of vocabulary per language, grouped into topics or lessons or not, and it will be available in both directions (e. g. English-Dutch and Dutch-English). For example if you enter "Hallo" as Dutch and "Hello, Hi, G'Day" as the English translation and you can then look up "Hello", "Hi" or "G'Day" in the automatically-created English-Dutch dictionary. During practise, this split is also used; the program will e. g. ask you to provide a translation for "G'Day". Assuming you also entered "Goede dag" with the English translation "G'Day", it will accept both "Hallo" and "Goede dag" as correct answers. You may also add grammar information such as noun gender with the vocabulary and call it up in the dictionaries later.
- practise vocabulary using the Leitner method or vocabulary matching, either all vocabulary or just topic/lesson-based. If you enter 400 words as new vocabulary, the program will however not expect you to practise all of them immediately, it'll present a chunk of 30 words for the first drawer and then ask you whether you wish to continue practising new words from that drawer, otherwise it'll continue with the next full drawer (which contains words you knew before but haven't practised in a while).
- look up words in both directions, their grammatical information (if provided) and the lesson / topic they belong to
- import vocabulary lists from .spr files and there are around 90 such .spr files available from my website, http://www.LearnALanguage.tk (on the pages also informing about online courses and the like). These lists are fairly extensive, some more suitable for the dictionaries than for a beginner looking to practise only the most common words.

[Sarabi]

Hmm... Well, there's a flashcard site I use, but I don't bother until I get to the point where I can somewhat read newspapers and can no longer keep a progress in vocabulary without just plain studying (as opposed to practicing). However, they changed the program around, much to my annoyance, so one can no longer type the words into a textbox for practice. Also, this Leitner method Junesun speaks of is only offered to people who pay, but that doesn't bother me. I just delete words that I have down really well and think I'll never forget.

Well, here's the site, if you're interested:
http://www.flashcardexchange.com

It has an extensive section of language cards made by users, but I tend to stick to my own cards unless I'm studying my native language.

Hoi, Jean-François ! Welkom to UniLang! Junesun deserves some congrats.

[Kazimer]

I don't if anyone would know this yet. Why is the number 1 een sometimes written één? Maybe it is to distinguish the indefinite article from the number.

[Saaropean]

I don't if anyone would know this yet. Why is the number 1 een sometimes written één?

I think (but I'm not sure) "een" is an indefinite article (in English "a"/"an"), and "één" is the number 1 (in English "one").

[Kazimer]

I don't if anyone would know this yet. Why is the number 1 een sometimes written één?

I think (but I'm not sure) "een" is an indefinite article (in English "a"/"an"), and "één" is the number 1 (in English "one").

Ok, that makes sense. Maybe it's a way to distinguish between the indefinite article and the number. The same thing happens in most romance languages, but no differentiation (ex. fr. un/une mean either a/an or one in en.).
Thanks

Junesun - I like the way the Sprachprofi (correct spelling?) program looks. I just have one problem I cannot download the dutch file from the site. It either says invalid filetype or file missing. Appriciate it very much if you could help.
Thanks,
Kazimer

[billathon]

Yeah, een is the article, één is the number. They're pronounced differently, and it's important to make a distinction between een boek and één boek.

[Meowth]

thanks a lot Junesun, if you can send it to me, that would be great (BTW, my e-mail is orejadjudas@yahoo.com)

i have seen before your site for a latin course, it's very useful since i'm in my first year of it so i remember when you posted something like you were going to China for an intensive course

Queen Ehlana, i'll check your link out, thanks for replying i guess it'll be a good help for my dutch (and any other language) learning

[Sarabi]

Graag gedaan, Meowth!

I read on a site that the conjugation for zij is the infinitive, but the beginners' site "exclusively in Dutch" says zij loopt, zij ligt, etc... all the same as conjugations for hij. And then I checked the Verbix conjugator which said zij loopen. Then again, I've known Verbix to be, well, WRONG.

So... could anyone deconfuse me?