Trellum

Hi there!!  I'm also moving to the Netherlands soon!  I think in your case the best you can do is to keep on practicing the language, if you can listen to dutch podcasts and try to talk with as many natives as often as possible. The only way you can improve your comprehension is listening as much dutch as you can, go to a site like speaky and find a language exchange buddy.

By the way, where in the Netherlands are you located? South or north?  I have noticed for me it's harder to understand the people from the south of the Netherlands.  I was told in the north people speak different dialects. I'm nervous about that.

To be honest I had no idea this project even existed. Thanks a lot for sharing this with us!!!  I'm currently studying Dutch and will be having a very important exam soon, those subtitled talk will surely help me greatly!  I only wished they made the subtitles even bigger and easier to read.  That is the only complaint I have regarding to this project, other than that... AMAZING job.

Who here has tried using mind maps instead of taking grammar notes?  I have done it myself and let me tell you is not as difficult and tedious as it would seem, actually I find doing this way more helpful than taking notes the usual way. I've found this mind mapping method makes it easier for me to remember important things, specially certain grammar.

I recently made a mind map to remember what some of the rules to know when a word is a De or Het word in Dutch.  I also plan to use it to remember the adjective endings and so on.  I've found mind mapping is a wonderful method to organize several ideas in just one place

I might scan and post some of my mind maps in the future (Dutch learning section), just to give dutch student an idea on how to create their own mind maps.

This is a very good point that someone else made! of course it's best they learn it from being a baby because then it becomes second nature, it becomes embedded in their heads and they grow up to speak the language naturally; effectively making them 'native" speakers in a sense.

I think that someone else was me in another thread   A thread I created about active listening if I am not mistaken.  But yeah, children have it so easy when it comes to language, that is why it'd not be so shocking if we meet a kid who can speak 5 languages.  It's all up to the parents in the end.

It depends on the person, I have heard of people who speak even 25 languages.  I think the brain has an amazing potential and capacity, and it's up to the person to use it to the fullest. Some people have a natural ability to learn languages   There are no limits for some people when it comes to language learning

Hi there!  Cool blog, I have already checked some of your posts and it looks like a very interesting blog.  I see you are focusing on Chinese?  I checked the site you recommended in your blog ''Fluent u'', sadly they don't offer dutch

Hi there!  I agree with linguaholic, it'd be better to study dutch first, German will become even easier.  The only hard thing about dutch is the word order, but the fact it doesn't have so many articles is really good (unlike German), so if i were you I'd definitely go for that.  You can leave Italian at the end, since Dutch and German are the ones that might take some more effort at first.

It doesn't look like the writing system of any language I have seen or heard of,  it looks more like of of those fantasy languages, one of those fantasy alien languages I could be wrong, but I have seen pretty weird writing systems before and this is definitely not in the list.

Hi guys!  There is something I have had some issues with lately, I'm talking about the adjective endings in dutch!  I have heard this happens to a lot people, so hopefully this will help someone   For now I will only talk about adjectives and definite articles and how the latter affects the former.

Dutch only has two definite articles: De and Het.  An adjective gets the ''e'' ending if a definite article precedes the  noun, this applies both in the singular and plural form.  For example:

Singular:

De grote hond.

Het grote huis.

De grote jas.

De mooie vrouw.

Het mooie gezicht.

Plural:

De grote honden.

De oude huizen.

De leuke gezichten.

De eenvoudige taken.

*An adjective also gets an ''e'' ending if a demonstrative or possessive pronoun precedes the noun:

Deze oude hond.

Mijn oude hond.

Dit oude huis.

Mijn oude huis.

Here is a list of demonstrative pronouns in case you have forgotten:

Dit

Deze

Dat

Die

Possessive pronouns:

Mijn

Je/jouw

Uw

Zijn

Haar

Ons/onze

Jullie/je

Hun

I hope you find my notes helpful, I copied them from my notebook   I'll later explain more about the use of possessive and demonstrative pronouns in dutch.  More about adjectives to come as well   If you got any suggestion or corrections, please let me know.

Apart from the sites Welkom has mentioned, there are others you might want to check, like for example ''Memrise'', I really like the fact they offer a lot free courses in many languages!  It's amazing!  ''Polyglot'' is also a good site.  Verbix is really useful if you are having issues conjugating a verb, a lot languages are available. I highly recommend you to bookmark that site for future reference.

Right now I am learning dutch mostly online, also using a course that focus on active listening only, I use the sites I mentioned to you in the post, plus others I didn't mention because they are only targeted at people learning dutch. I also listen to podcasts in dutch

I'd not believe what those bloggers say is 100% accurate, at least not for everyone, because as you might know we are all different and learn in different ways.  I learnt english in a very intuitive and natural way, not using direct translation, that worked great, but I was 16 years old back then.  So what worked for me then might not even work for me now.  So can you imagine how it is for most people? 

Some learn better using word,s other images.  I used to make my flash cards when I wanted to learn Finnish.  I thought it was a good idea then, but right now I'd not see them as really helpful, since my learning style has changed. Now I'm suffering from a rare health impairment (brain), so my mind doesn't seem to process images so well when it comes to memorization.  Everyone is different, you see?  People also change a lot...

What I am trying to say here is that you need to find what works for YOU, you got to do this by trial and error.  Just like I did. It's funny, but active listening is helping me learn dutch, even though I believe it impossible some years ago, but active listening seems to be working for me.  Memorizing entire phrases has helped me use the word order in dutch almost instinctively.  Now I know when the order is off... I know know!  Just like kids do with their mother language!

I personally would not want to but I do not mind if someone else wants to.  To me, if someone has the time and the desire then it is a good ambition.  I do not hinder myself in anything and I do not begrudge other people either.  If I was in a class and each of us only new one language, I would be tempted to learn a lot of languages all at once.  The human desire to communicate is strong and speaking to someone in their native tongue is very powerful and heart touching. :grin:

You do well   I don't mind it either if someone wants to learn a lot languages, some of them actually are very successful, but others don't seem to have a very solid base in most of those languages.  I have noticed with some people, like this guy I know who is learning probably more than 6 languages at a time. He uses only the internet... he practices with people from all over the world on Skype

  A professor once told our class that it's better to have "more of less rather than less of more."  In short, don't try to be a jack-of-all-trades, but rather focus on your desired specialization/s.  This very well applies to languages - you can learn some or most of the available languages around the world, but you can't learn ALL of them.

I couldn't have said it better! It does feel like those people less of more!!!  This one guy who inspired this thread doesn't seem to have any solid base in those languages he has learned, not even english.  Is english is not all that bad, but is not good either, I mean, you can easily tell he is not a native... he makes mistakes not even the native speakers make, hehehe.  It's better to focus in just one or two languages max at a time... I have no idea how he has time to go to school, have a girlfriend and study those languages. i admire the guy.

So far the people I have met who are learning several languages at once seem to have a very sallow knowledge of the language.  Very few of them can actually talk most of them fluently. Like this guy I know, he is learning god knows how many languages, but I have noticed he still makes a lot mistakes when using english,  he makes more mistakes with other languages he is learning.

This leads me to believe his bases are not solid enough.  Which makes me think trying to learn all those languages at once is not a good idea if you want a solid base.  Still I am not trying to diminish this guy's achievements, but it's obvious he should focus in just two or 3 languages at the time.

Learning new languages can be frustrating. You have to turn off one half of your brain to open another that is ready for all of this new and complicated information. As for the person who should be helping you, I think they are doing exactly what they should be doing. When learning a language, you need to really, really step up your game, and what better than to be pressured to do so?

Think of it this way, if you were to be surrounded by people who only speak Dutch and you tried to speak in your currently state of knowing the language, would they be courteous of you? Probably not, right? They would most likely not talk to you as much because of the language barrier. And that should make you feel more uncomfortable than anything. So the person helping you is truly giving you that perspective to get you to work harder; especially if it is an extremely important exam that you are to take soon.

The pressure is not something that really bothers me, what bothers me is the pressure + lack of interest to  correct me when needed.  It feels so pointless to me really, but I've been asking this person to correct me, instead of being annoying and say something like ''wat zegt ie?''.  It gets a bit annoying for a while, because sometimes I can't just formulate on my own more complex phrases, so it's when I think he should be correcting me.  I'm still having issues with that.  But things are getting better, I'm understanding the word order in dutch better, if it wasn't for it I'd already be far along

Trellum, you sound very miserable learning under this person! I would personally NOT continue with them, because learning a new language to me ought to be fun and exciting. I personally don't want to be put under pressure and made to feel uncomfortable, especially if I'm paying! I was particularly concerned when you said this person is so" lazy to even correct me when I type something wrong". Are you paying for the services? Is there any reason why you can't move on and find someone more suited to your preferred method of learning?!

Hi there!  Thanks for the reply.  No, I'm not paying, it's a friend who is helping me out with the language (I'm just a few months away from the exam date!), but as I said he doiesn't seem very helpful.  Things have improved a little bit though, the other day we were practicing.  Burt as I said I'm not 100% most of the time if what i said was right, because I need to ask him to correct me. It's frustrating, but is getting better

If it works for them, why not. I don't think I could do it, I would get confused between them. I learned French for 5 years at school, and after 4 of those years I took up Spanish, and it wasn't ideal. They were too similar, I constantly got them mixed up. French and Hebrew are a good combination for me right now because they are nothing alike, and I'm much more advanced in French. Maybe it wouldn't work so well if I was just starting out with both.

Hahaha, same here.  I've always feared to mix up the languages so badly, that is why I was so hesitant to learn a language like french, because it looks and sounds a lot like my own mother language.  For some reason that also put me off, didn't find that so cool at all!

While I believe that to be a remarkable ability, I find that to be cheating the system. I believe that if you're going to be learning a language, you should figure out how the language works in relation to its culture and the history of how this specific language came to be. Especially if the language does not derive from Latin roots. For those who are learning more than one language at a time, you're not getting the full experience of the language(s) that you're learning!

I feel the same way as you, plus I have noticed very few of those persons manage to dominate all those languages. This guy in particular, he speaks english and other languages, we both have spanish as our mother language.  But I see him still making some huge mistakes in english, he thinks he has dominated it, but is far from it.  If only he focused in only one language at a time, or only two at a time I think he'd have a greater progress

As others users have mentioned, learning a lot of languages at the same time can hinder progression. It is impressive if you can pull it off but learning how clauses are put together, the correct pronunciation, the culture behind the language etc is time-consuming and requires a lot of studying and practice. More often than not, people learning lots of languages simultaneously will only be able to pick up on the basics of each language instead of deepening their understanding of a single language as a whole.

So I believe that if someone wants to really learn a language, they should study one language at a time.

I've actually notice that when this guy uses english (not his mother language) he makes a lot mistakes I don't.  I blame it on the fact he is studying several languages at once and not taking proper care of learning the language properly.  As you said, I think most of the languages he knows are ''half-learnt'' and makes a lot mistakes!  He thinks he has mastered english, but not at all... he still needs to learn more words and learn more about slang.

I will talk with this person again, it's really frustrating as it is. You know what is the worst thing? This person is to lazy to even correct me when I type something wrong. Not helpful at all!! I need to keep asking the person after writing something new, I need to ask this person if what I just wrote was right or wrong.

I can recall being about 10 years old and discussing with my best friend at the time about learning Spanish and how we would start taking classes as soon as they were offered.  I did start Spanish when I was about 11 or  12 or so and kept it up until I was a freshman in college.  I can still read it pretty well, but I have never been good at speaking it.

That is very interesting, but sorry to hear you haven't mastered it yet.  In my opinion everything you need is to practice it more   It sounds you have really  good bases but you need to actually use the language more.

I only developed an interest in learning other languages when I first heard the German band Rammstein on the radio. I instantly liked their songs, so I tried to google what the title of their songs meant. Now I google the words of their songs bit by bit or phrase by phrase to know what they are saying in their songs.

I love Rammstein!!! They're one of my favorite bands of all time!!!  I listen to them since I was 13 years old   I thought of learning German for them when I was younger... I didn't get too far.

Before I started high school I had no interest in learning languages and throughout high school I did my best at my lessons but that was all. It wasn't until shortly after graduating high school that I started having an interest. It all began when I read an article in the local paper of a tour guide who taught himself German. I figured if he can teach himself a new language then I could try to master what I was already introduced to in high school and that's what i've been doing.

Good for you, Rosa, better late than never. I've always said that, truth is some people have a natural interest for languages ,while others need something to really help them in the motivation department.

I started taking an interest in learning a foreign language while I was still in primary school, around 10 years old. I was really fixated on the French language. Sadly, foreign languages are not offered in Botswana state schools So it wasn't until I was at uni that I was finally able to take up a French Minor.

Oh sorry to hear that! In our country they started offering english as a second language in school, but this is quite recent.  Back when  I was little they didn't.

I can't really say. I was interested in languages for as long as I can remember actually. I remember being around 7 years old and having a playmate who only spoke Italian and I was thinking that it would be really cool if we could communicate in her language instead of doing our own signs and pointing.  :wacky: I think it helped that we moved around a lot and I got exposed to different languages and found the differences and similarities of languages interesting.

That is very interesting, but what was your actual age when you actually started making an effort to learn a language? I don't remember thinking of learning any kind of language at that age, but when I hit the 16 mark I started to really think about it.  It's so good to have early experience like the one you had, that kind of experiences are so enriching for both parties.

I think most non-natives have similar problem with speaking the new language in public. It could be more than just being shy though, it could also be lack of confidence that you won't be able to do well as natives do. Try opening up around non-natives that are learning the same language and that may help.

Before I started learning dutch I'd have agreed with the shy part, but now I must say that some people don't like to speak the language in public because maybe they have issues building up sentences.  I do now with dutch, I don't like to speak it so much because I have the hardest time with the word order... and words like ''er'', ''wat'', ''maar'', ''het'', etc that if you skip them might change the meaning of what you said.  It's so confusing.  If it wasn't for this I'd be super confident speaking dutch... despite my accent

I have met a lot people who are trying to learn as many languages as possible, all thanks to Speaky and other web sites to find language exchange buddy.  I've met kids as young as 15 years old who already speak 3 languages or more and are interested in learning many more! To be honest I don't see this as something odd at all, because I went through the same thing when I was 16-17 years old. 

I don't quite understand why I had that fascination with learning as many languages as possible. I guess I saw hoe english had opened so many doors for me, so I thought that by learning more languages more doors would open up for me. 

There are languages that were harder to learn due the scarcity of materials found online to learn them. One example of this is Sorani Kurdish, some years ago it was impossible to find materials to learn that language, but now it's  not so hard!  But there are languages that are almost impossible to learn with materials found online or offline... like for example ''ladino''.  There are some resources online, but not many... and the only place where I've heard they offer courses sometimes is Israel.

Most Sephardi Jews in Israel don't speak ladino, but some organizations are starting to offer courses for those interested in learning ladino.

I know how hard it can be to actually speak a language because you are too worried about the way you pronounce the words. It's all in your mind tho, the only way you can get over it is fight shyness and get to speak it. Try finding language exchange partners and speak it with them, this is the only way you can fight this.  I did this and now I can speak english with no issues at all, I no longer feel afraid to screw up.