Strange confessions

[JazzedPotato]

Het is erg frustrerende! Ik schrijf mijn zinnen zorgvuldig, ik lees en onderzoek hen en voor mij ze zijn juiste, maar jouw (en ook de andere vraagbaken's) correcties zo duidelijk zijn! "mensen die woon in Londen"! Hoe komt het dat ik dat zou hebben geschreven? Mensen! Meervoud! Meer dan een mens dus de werkwoorden moeten "wonen en "spreken"! En het woordvolgorde, "Veel mensen die in Londen wonen spreken weinig (of geen) Engels". Dit is geen moeilijk zin, waarom kan ik het juist woordvolgorde niet gebruiken! En de andere fouten, en de anderen, en de anderen...


Schermen

Ik begrijp je frustratie, die komt nu eenmaal met het leren van een taal. Maar door onze fouten kunnen we juist leren, toch? Geen fouten maken betekent ook niets leren mi. Hier dus niet bang voor zijn, lijkt me

Ik heb dit topic met veel plezier (en af en toe een luide lach) gelezen omdat het erg herkenbaar is. Taal is gewoon af en toe 'onlogisch', en verwarrend.

Ik merk dat ik hier zelf soms ook last van heb als ik een bepaalde text lees bijvoorbeeld, en het uit de context niet helemaal duidelijk is wat er bedoeld wordt. Zo kan bijv het woord ' voorkomen' hele verschillende betekenissen hebben afhankelijk van de klemtoon.

' Deze bloemen komen in de Alpen voor ' - These flowers grow (/ exist) in the Alpes'
'Het komt mij vreemd voor ' - It sounds strange to me
'Hij moest bij de rechter vOOrkomen' - He needed to appear before the judge.
' Een verergering moest absoluut worden voorkOmen'- Deterioration absolutely had to be prevented.


Especially when you are reading in the middle of a sentence and not sure of the context it can be confusing because your brain is interpreting it while you are reading, which can stump you in the next sentence.. That's happened to me a few times..

As for mistakes made while learning English, well for many of us that' sbeen a while.. Although obviously it is an ongoing process. Especially people of my generation and younger have been 'exposed' to a lot of English by tv - with subtitles - and radio.

Two accounts I remember.
1. A friend and I were visiting a party where there were also 2 American girls present. (One of which mentioned she was from the 'Dairy State'..!). We were having snacks as one does at a party.. There were also little 'toostjes' (crackers) with french cheese, such as brie, which some of you might know is very popular here.
We handed these girls some 'toostjes met brie', trying to be nice. One of them asked what was on them. My friend and I couldn't remember the word 'mold' so we tried to graphically describe it. ' You know, when bread turns green after a while..? ' etc. (Obviously this is a good and unharmful kind of mold..) . The girsl went completely pale, and in disbelief they shouted out:' You let us eat MOLD?!' - pretty much spitting the stuff out when discovering what we meant.. In spite of us trying to reassure them that the stuff really was harmless..


2. When I was a kid, I think maybe 8 or 9 or so, I asked my older sister reading one of her magazines what the word 'teenager' meant. I pronounced it as it were Dutch: 'Teen- agger' . 'Teen' obviously meant 'toe' to me, and 'agger', well I had no clue but it sounded like it could be something on a farm.. Which in een magazine between make-up tips etc made no sense whatsoever..It cracked my sister up completely and I was offended, because I really didn' t see what was so funny..

[MysticalChicken]

I don't know if this really counts or not, since I didn't say it out loud or anything, but just read it.

I bought a Dutch-language children's book called Peppino at Powell's Books here in Portland, and although it's still a bit too advanced for me (I hadn't noticed it was meant for ages 9 and up; I certainly don't have the vocabulary of a nine-year-old yet), I can read some sentences in it. I was trying to read the first page with the help of my (crappy) dictionary, and there is the sentence "De rij wagens leek eindeloos". I knew already that "rij" meant "line" or "row", and I looked up "eindeloos" and found that it means "endless", and "wagens" was pretty self-explanatory, but "leek" was giving me some grief. Dictionary said it meant "layman". Which of course makes no sense in the context ("the row of wagons layman endless"?) So I was puzzling over it and puzzling over it and then suddenly I remembered that "keek" is the past tense of "kijken" (to see), so I thought, maybe "leek" is the past tense of "lijken"? So I looked up "lijken" and it means "be like, seem, appear." "The row of wagons seemed endless." Ah, that makes MUCH more sense.

I need to see if I can find some simpler books though... I actually looked for some Jip en Janneke, but they didn't seem to have any...

[Joke]

Hier kun je een paar Jip en Janneke verhaaltjes online lezen:
Here you can read some Jip and Janneke stories online:
http://www.kinderwerk.beverwijkweb.nl/h ... naid=59636

Ik heb er ook eens eentje voorgelezen:
I also recorded one:
http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=POD.00011

Veel plezier ermee!
Enjoy!

Joke

[MysticalChicken]

Dank u wel, I read the first story and I had to look up some words (and some of those aren't in my dictionary...) but I could read most of it. I bookmarked it on my del.icio.us too.

[Quetzal]

I don't know if this really counts or not, since I didn't say it out loud or anything, but just read it.

I bought a Dutch-language children's book called Peppino at Powell's Books here in Portland, and although it's still a bit too advanced for me (I hadn't noticed it was meant for ages 9 and up; I certainly don't have the vocabulary of a nine-year-old yet), I can read some sentences in it. I was trying to read the first page with the help of my (crappy) dictionary, and there is the sentence "De rij wagens leek eindeloos". I knew already that "rij" meant "line" or "row", and I looked up "eindeloos" and found that it means "endless", and "wagens" was pretty self-explanatory, but "leek" was giving me some grief. Dictionary said it meant "layman". Which of course makes no sense in the context ("the row of wagons layman endless"?) So I was puzzling over it and puzzling over it and then suddenly I remembered that "keek" is the past tense of "kijken" (to see), so I thought, maybe "leek" is the past tense of "lijken"? So I looked up "lijken" and it means "be like, seem, appear." "The row of wagons seemed endless." Ah, that makes MUCH more sense.

I need to see if I can find some simpler books though... I actually looked for some Jip en Janneke, but they didn't seem to have any...

For the record, while "wagen" can indeed mean "wagon", it can also just mean "car" as well as "barrow" (kruiwagen = wheelbarrow), "trolley" (winkelwagentje = shopping trolley/cart) and so on - without the context I don't know which of those things was meant in the book.

But yeah, strong verbs can be tricky.

[EetSmakelijk]

Hi.
I personally think you did a great job of figuring that out and that book might be something you read when you feel like doing something really challenging. Don't give up on it!