Learning Dutch
 

Does anyone know of a good place to study Dutch in the Netherlands? I was looking into some of the universities but wanted to know if anyone had any first hand experience with it. Thanks

Topping for quebec--anyone who wants to study Dutch should be given as much help as possible.

That sounds like Dutch is a difficult language! I had assumed that because it is the closest language to English it would be easy for an english-speaker to learn - am I wrong?

Dutch is in fact quite a difficult language; we had a close friend from the Netherlands, and he told us that Dutch children study other languages because it's so hard for foreigners to learn Dutch. Often the Dutch themselves speak English, German, and French.

I studied Dutch when I lived in Haarlem in the late 1970s. The small institute where I studied is long gone. There must be others. I suggest that you contact the Netherlands Tourist Office in New York and ask for guidance.

The other ways that I used to pick up the language are still available. These are to get a Dutch girl friend, hang out in the brown bars, watch English language movies with Dutch subtitles, and read the newspapers.

There are some Dutch language texts available from professors and authors in western Michigan because there is a large pouplation of Dutch descendents around Grand Rapids, including the city of Holland. There is at least one college around there which grew out of that ancestry and has a Dutch language program.

Most important in Nederland -- NEVER speak English because then the Dutch will never speak back to you in Dutch. They love to speak English and they do it very well.

The major pronounciation problem is the letter g. It's from the throat. This has led to the popular idea that Dutch is not a language but is a disease of the throat. The word dag, for instance (meaning day, hello, and good-bye), sounds like a cough.

Don't forget you can study Dutch in Belgium as well...there is a nice school in Brugge (according to some friends who studied there). Brugge is one of the most beautiful towns in Europe
http://users.skynet.be/babel/inhoud.htm

I don't think Dutch is *that* hard to learn...we've picked up quite a bit from taking some classes when we got here (I already spoke French) and then watching a lot of Dutch and Flemish TV. Of course some of the stuff we've picked up from Dutch subtitles on American TV shows shouldn't be said in polite society ;-) (particularly Oz and The Simpsons)

er zijn heel veel Engelstaligen die Nederlands spreken. Ga er wonen, houdt contact met de mensen en kijk op http://nederlands.jouwpagina.nl/

Ruud, That page is a good start.

As for studying Dutch in Brugge, note that the Flemish accent is rather different... a much reduced (or even eliminated) throat-clearing for "g", for example, making it a very very pleasant "h" sound. The written Dutch language is the same in both countries, however.

We Dutch say that the Flemish cannot pronounce the 'g' correctly - they speak with a 'soft g'. Also people from the Southern provinces of the Netherlands (Noord-Brabant and Limburg) are immediately recognizable by their pronunciation of the 'g'. I think it sounds charming, however.

Talking about g's... it seems to me the 'soft' southern g is easier to learn for foreigners as well. All universities in Flanders offer language courses as well. As for my own university in the lovely city of Ghent, check http://taalnet.ugent.be . A Portuguese girl I know obtained information from the embassy. Don't know if it was the Belgian one in Portugal or the Portuguese one in Belgium though...

Dutch is not difficult; the grammar is much simpler than German. The reason why few foreigners bother to learn it is that it is a relatively minor language, so most Dutch people speak at least some English.

Do I understand from the responses to this thread that Dutch and Flemish are actually the same language? I have wondered about this, since a girl in my daughter's school who came from Belgium told my daughter she spoke Dutch, when I always thought the language in Belgium was Flemish.

Most British people are told at school that Belgians speak Flemish or French. The "Flemish" is actually Dutch: the people who speak it call it "Nederlands". There are only minor differences between the language spoken in Belgium and the one spoken over the border in the Netherlands, the same as there are minor differences between the French spoken in Belgium and the French spoken in France. The difference I remember as a visitor is that "ham" appears on menus in the Netherlands as "ham" but in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, it is "hesp".

Carola, your reply made me smile. We Flemish say that the Dutch cannot pronounce the 'g' in a correct way ...
We both do our best, I guess!
I do feel, though, that our Flemish language in general is much softer than the Dutch that is spoken in the Netherlands.

Geoff, You're right re the 'ham/hesp'. Being a (Flemish) member on a Dutch community board, I was surprised to learn in the course of the years how different the vocabulary in our two low countries - sharing the same language - is.

The Flemish do speak Dutch; it's the same language, with the same vocabulary and grammar rules. However, the accent is different, and Flemish and Dutch people often use different words. It's a bit like English and Scottish I suppose. Or UK English and US English.
The problem about learning Dutch is that Dutch people nearly all speak English, so when you struggle to find the right words in dutch, someone will probably answer you in English.

To make things more complicated: in some parts of the Netherlands (Noord Brabant and Limburg provinces), a soft version of Dutch is spoken with a "g" similar to the Flemish g.
There are surprisingly many dialects in Dutch. I have lived all over the country and can understand most dialects, but many people who have always lived in one region can not understand a Dutch dialect from another region.
The 4 cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are all within 60 miles from each other, but each has a distinct dialect.
The discussion about the differences between "Dutch" and "Flemish" reminds me of a resume we recently received from an (American) lady who wrote that she "is fluent in two languages: American English and British English".

To Myriam - weeellll, I think I could pronounce the soft 'g' if I wanted to, I'm not sure if you (or most non-Dutch speaking people) could pronounce our harsh 'g'. It is not that common. Foreigners have a hard time saying 'Van Gogh' or 'Scheveningen', for instance! I do agree with you that the soft Flemish or Southern Dutch probably sounds much nicer and friendlier to a foreign ear!
As for the complexity of the language, what makes Dutch difficult is not the grammar, I think, but its many expressions and specific sayings. That is of course true for most languages, but I do think Dutch has more sayings, proverbs and specific expressions than for example English.

Sjoerd -
I had a good laugh about the job applicant who boasted of her fluency in two languages.

As with Holland, the U.S. has a number of semi-dialects, and most northerners have considerable difficulty understanding someone who speaks with a heavy southern accent and uses the many distinctly southern coloquialisms. (And I'm sure southerners would have trouble understanding a New Yorker.)