Too Poor to Learn!

As the title suggests, my finances are taking a bit of a battering at present. Having a car in this day and age really doesn't allow for much spare cash when you're only on £6.50 an hour.

As I type this, I have almost completed level one Rosetta Stone. I will undoubtedly run through the lessons again to make absolutely sure I've retained everything learnt so far but pretty soon I'm going to require level 2. This means I need money. £189 to be precise - which I don't have.

At the moment, I'm desparately trying to get rid of the car so I can cancel the outrageously expensive insurance. That alone will save me £270 per month on insurance and around another £100 on fuel.

That means I can get both levels 2 and 3 at a discounted rate, which will set me up with lessons for about the next six months. Long-term motivation is my friend in this exercise. Every penny saved from ditching the motor is a penny closer to me being a fluent Dutch speaker.

Status Update #1

It's been two months now. That is, two months since I actually started LEARNING, not just telling myself I would do at some point.

At first, I wasn't sure if I would need to motivate myself to do any studying but luckily for me, that hasn't really been a problem so far. <Insert smiley face here!>

I've mainly been going through the Rosetta Stone lessons and I'm almost finished with the level one software. I've also been working through this fantastic book, too:

So am I anywhere near fluent yet? Well, no, sadly not.

Although I can now put basic sentences together and have equally basic conversations about where I live and what I do, my vocabulary is still very small - maybe 150 - 200 words at a guess. Even with such a small knowledge at this stage, I can describe a number of different things....places, colours, objects, people, etc.

The level one stuff is basic, since it has to be as a starting point. There is an old saying that goes "don't run before you can walk." I've mentioned before that this is a long-term ambition of mine. Two months is no time at all to learn a new language, especially with a full-time job which limits how much time I can spend on it.

One thing I really do need to work on is my accent. Speaking Dutch with an English accent just sounds odd - imagine Steve McClaren in reverse! Dutch vowel sounds are very different to ours, and words that look identical to English ones often have very different pronunciations.

The audio files with the Rosetta Stone pack have definitely helped up to now, but I need to hear real Dutch conversations to pick up the best accent I can. Luckily, a friend told me about Radio 538, a Dutch station aimed a younger listeners. My Belgian friend Marie hasn't heard of it so I'm going to start listening to it and found out what it's like. Even if I can't understand half of what's being said, I will at least be able to immerse myself in Dutch for long periods of time and embed the accent into my mind.

So, in summary: I'm still very much a work in progress. It's still early days but I've learned looooaaads since I started and with my books and other resources to help with the Rosetta Stone lessons, hopefully my next update will see me much more accomplished:)

Tot ziens!

Nick Clogg?!

One more thing I stumbled across today was this video of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg speaking Dutch fluently for a TV interview.

Perhaps I should contact him and tell him i'll only vote for the Lib Dems if he passes on some tips and plugs my blog at Prime Minister's Questions!

Een Werkboek

When I studied French at school, we always worked mainly from a workbook that had loads of stuff to do. Most textbooks and phrasebooks you find in most bookshops are just very basic and only allow to emorise stock phrases.

If I want to become a fluent Dutch speaker, I can't just memorise things. I actually need to UNDERSTAND how the language works. I realise that I will have to invest a lot of time and effort into this, but that was the idea from the very beginning!

Whilst looking around the web, I stumbled upon this Dutch workbook on the Book Depository website. As soon as I had a look at the details, I was instantly reminded of that same French workbook we had at school. Without even reading any reviews, I clicked on "add to basket" and ordered it.

£35 is a lot to spend on a book that I know so little about, but if it's as good as the kind you get at school, it should really spead my learning up a lot and help me not just memorise things, but actually allow me to understand how it all fits together. That's what will make the difference between being conversational and being fluent.

Rosetta Stoned

One of the key words I used in my last post was INTERACTIVITY. Reading books endlessly is all good and well but concentration inevitably drops after a while and you stop taking things in properly.

I didn't learn my first language just by reading. I learned it through interactions with my surroundings and the people in it. That's where Rosetta Stone comes in. I first heard of it on a TV advertisement a while back. At the time I wasn't bothered at all about learning a new language but the advert did stick in my mind..

Unlike other similar TV ads (how much more crap can JML produce?!), this one actually did a god job of showcasing the product and it genuinely looked impressive.

Rosetta Stone is fairly well-known and although it is not cheap, I was so determined to succeeed at this that I bought it anyway (cheque in the post please, Rosetta Stone people). Although my purchase was based mainly on that ad and internet reviews, I didn't really know how good it would be until it arrived but I'm pleased to say it's worth EVERY penny!

Although they cover loads of different languages, I only looked at the Dutch package. It's split into three different levels. The first covers the most basic parts of Dutch and aims to build up a decent vocabulary. Levels two and three (when I get around to them) will expand on that and cover more complex phrases and sentences.

Each level is split into four units and each unit has four lessons to go though plus an end of unit test. Each lesson is a maximum of 30 minutes so it easily fits in with the most busy lifestyles. This video I found on Youtube sums up how it works pretty well:

The thing I love most about this is that right from lesson one, everything is in Dutch. There is no English text or audio at all. It makes you learn what each word and phrase means by getting you to associate them with pictures, just like we all do when we learn our first language as a baby.

Each lesson has sections on grammar and vocabulary and there are reading, writing, listening and speaking tasks to complete. I wasn't lying when I said it wasn't cheap (level one cost me £149, which is around 180 Euros) but it really does beat other products on the market.

At the minute, I'm on the final unit of level one so level two will be on my shopping list very soon. Even though I'll spend nearly £500 on all three, I still think it's worth it. The look of shock on my mother's face when I started talking to her in Dutch for the first time justifies the cost on its own!

The Tools of Learning

I've neglected this blog for the past week or so (stating the obvious!). With NVQ stuff at work, I haven't had much time to write new posts or do what I'm writing about in the first place - learning Dutch!

So far, I've given a brief background about why I wanted to do this and a few facts about the language itself. However, now I get to the most important challenge in front of me: HOW to learn the language (and remember what I've learnt).

Even before I started this blog I have actually been attempting to learn since early February. I have a few tools at my disposal to help. Some obvious, some I've paid for (in an attempt to show outstanding commitment to the cause!).

With languages like French, even non-speakers know what things like bonjour mean. With Dutch, I knew absolutely nothing. Not even yes and no or please and thank you. And considering most adlt colleges and universities don't offer pure Dutch courses, I had to find other means to help me, which I will detail.

1. The Internet - Pretty obvious really. It's already there to use, it has all the facts and information I could possibly want. Free translation software, Dutch Youtube videos, etc. Plenty of useful stuff for me to use. But what the web doesn't offer is the key to success in such a task: structure. It's fine looking things up online but to effectively learn a new language you have to have a proper learning plan or else you will never succeed.
2. Software - Proper courses are well out of my price range with tuition fees mocking my empty wallet like a gloating bully. For me, my best hope was something I can use at home but has plenty of content and structure. Safe to say I have found such a thing, which my next post will look at in more detail as I think it's bloody marvellous!
3. Books - The keystone of all learning. No linguist would be complete without a decent dictionary and some theory books. Fortunately, Amazon is a godsend when it comes to this. I have a comprehensive English to Dutch dictionary and a fantastic book written by a Dutch language professor covering all basic Dutch spelling and grammar rules. It also reads as a week-to-week study course which will complement point number 2 wonderfully.
4. Voices - Not the ones I hear inside my head, but actual real, Dutch-speaking ones. I've managed to find some audio files to accompany my software which I have put onto my MP3 player. This means I can go for walks (which I do often) whilst native Dutch speakers really help me remember what 'm learning at home.
5. Dutch-speaking Friends - Or friend, I should say. She's @MarieS95 and she's a Dutch-speaking Belgian (and a wonderful person too). Who better to help me than someone who already knows Dutch?!

If I think of more, I'll post them, but for now I'll leave it at that. A workman have never have too many tools but sometimes you only need a few to get the job done!

Going Dutch

Having chosen to learn Dutch, I soon realised that I knew absolutely nothing about it. Not even any basic words. This meant I had to get into research mode and find out everything I could about this new and mysterious tongue.

Dutch isn't traditionally a language studied at school or college in the UK so I had to do some digging to find infomration. Luckily, a quick online search provided plenty of information and tools and resources (more about those in my next post) that gave me lots of facts. Here are some of them:

• Dutch is spoken by an estimated 25 million people as their native language. Most of them live in the Netherlands and Belgium, although there are other Dutch-speaking communities in Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.
• Dutch is the official language of Flanders in Belgium, which is best known as being the site of some well-known battles from WW1.
• Although not an official language in Germany, Dutch is a popular second language among many Germans.
• Afrikaans, widely spoken in South Africa and Namibia, is derived from Dutch as many Dutch people settled there in the 18th Century.
• English and Dutch are both derived from similar Germanic roots and have many similarities. For instance the English word "apple" is spelt "appel" in Dutch.
• Dutch has TWO definitite articles ("de" and "het") whereas English only has one ("the").
• Dutch nouns are categorised as masculine or feminine. "De" is used with masculine verbs and "het" with feminine ones e.g. de jongen (the boy), het meisje (the girl).
• Dutch is a member of the West Germanic family tree, and as such, is a cousin of English and German and a sibling to Afrikaans. Another cousin is Frisian, a regional minority language spoken in the North of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Dutch is also related to North Germanic language family members, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

Speaking my Language

Before deciding to do this, the only language learning I've done specifically was doing French at school. At the time, I really didn't care much about it, although I'm lucky I have a decent memory, so I always passed my exams without any problem and I eventually left school with a B in my GCSE.

I've always been fascinated by other languages and for a long time I've wanted to learn one, but in a classroom it isn't the same. Then, I did French because I HAD to. This time, I'm doing it because I WANT to, which makes all the difference.

I have only used French outside of school once in my life. It was on a skiing holiday in the Alps (a school trip over the Easter holidays). We were staying a lovely village called Claviere, which was right on the French-Italian border. Half the village was in France, the other half in Italy. The border literally went right through the middle of the main street! There was even an arch to mark exactly where it was.

Most people there spoke English so I never had to use any French (although if I did, I would have made a fool of myself as my knowledge of it then was very small). However, our coach took us into the French mountain roads one day and we came to a McDonalds. All the staff there were French-speaking and to test us, my French teacher (who by coincidence had organised the trip) told us we had to order in French.

Although I mumbled to the woman behind the counter, I did manage to order what I wanted, although she probably hasn't heard someone speak such poor French since! So, having spent five years learning French at school, all I've used it for was to order a Big Mac!

My desire to learn Dutch is very different though. I really want to be fluent this time, not just "conversational." It's easy to learn a few everyday sentences and phrases. With just a few hours of practice, anybody could order a coffee or tell the time in another language. I want to go beyond that and really understand the language and how it fits together.

Eventually, once I am reasonably fluent, I want to go to the Netherlands or Belgium (or both, preferably!) and talk to people in their own language. 99% of English people abroad would expect the Dutch people to speak back in English. If it was the other way around and a Dutch speaker was here, I bet they wouldn't even ask us if we spoke Dutch.

I want to see the smile on their faces when I go to Amsterdam and start chatting to them in their own tongue. That would be the icing on the cake for me. Who knows how long it will take, but I sure hope you are still reading by the time it does!