What works for me

[heksje]

i am not a stritc grammar person when it comes to learning a language
the easiest way for me to learn is hang out with kids:P can sound stupid but that way i learn faster. i.e. for my dutch i read lots of comic strips, like suske en wiske, books by annie m. schmidt like jip en janneke is perfect for starters. these books not only help me learn the language but they also help me understand the dutch mentality too i mean how dutch people grow up etc. i kinda feel now i can associate with them more. dunno but perhaps it can work for some other people too
strip boeks are also cool cause you also learn some idioms and expressions and its easier to understand and learn new words.
also samson en gert is cool. you can check flemish/dutch tvs and kids programs.
i LLOOVEEE it!

[aeckersand]

For vocabulary, I met a guy once with a very clever approach. He bought the same book (davinci code) in his mother tongue and a translation in to the language he wanted to learn.
Then he started to read the book in the language he didn't know. Every time he didn't understand a word he took a look in the book in his native language and got the translation immediately without have to look up every single word using a dictionary.

I didn't use this method but I also learned dutch from reading booksm but I had to look up all words I didn't know.

Books I recommend are Harry Potter and any detective story. I often found that translated books are easier to understand, but that probably depends on the book.

[Quetzal]

For vocabulary, I met a guy once with a very clever approach. He bought the same book (davinci code) in his mother tongue and a translation in to the language he wanted to learn.
Then he started to read the book in the language he didn't know. Every time he didn't understand a word he took a look in the book in his native language and got the translation immediately without have to look up every single word using a dictionary.

I've heard of that method before, but it seems like a very bizarre way of learning a language. Anyone who's ever read the same book in multiple languages will know that translations aren't literal, and that even things that *can* be translated literally (not always the case with expressions, puns, etc.) aren't always, because sometimes something else just flows better. So in some cases it would work, but in others they'd still have to look up because the translation wasn't literal. And I imagine they could learn entirely wrong things that way...

But certainly, reading a book you already know in the language you're learning will help.

[markmcopc]

For vocabulary, I met a guy once with a very clever approach. He bought the same book (davinci code) in his mother tongue and a translation in to the language he wanted to learn.
Then he started to read the book in the language he didn't know. Every time he didn't understand a word he took a look in the book in his native language and got the translation immediately without have to look up every single word using a dictionary.

I've heard of that method before, but it seems like a very bizarre way of learning a language. Anyone who's ever read the same book in multiple languages will know that translations aren't literal, and that even things that *can* be translated literally (not always the case with expressions, puns, etc.) aren't always, because sometimes something else just flows better. So in some cases it would work, but in others they'd still have to look up because the translation wasn't literal. And I imagine they could learn entirely wrong things that way...

But certainly, reading a book you already know in the language you're learning will help.

What Quetzel says is obviously true. But, it's also the method used in this forum: it's very helpful when a vraagbaak writes the mothertongue equivalent of a Dutch sentence.

Some texts are published in many languages such as important speeches, international resolutions, papal encyclicals or the Bible. Some of these texts, the Bible obviously, have diverse Dutch translations to compare with one another which is very interesting and informative.

But, learning to speak or to write is very different from learning to read. Pronouncing Dutch was a big hurdle for me, and so for my first few weeks I worked only on diction. Inevitably, I've picked up some vocabulary that way, and pronunciation gets easier as I understand better what I'm reading. But now, I need to figure out how the language works, so that I can express myself. That's an entirely different kind of effort, and much more difficult.

Er zijn veel moeilijke dingen over het Nederlands te leren, maar de woordvolgorde is aan mij de zwaarste bevalling.
Many things are difficult to learn about Dutch; but for me, word order is the most excruciating effort (heaviest childbirth).

Recognition is different from creation. I make so many mistakes, it definitely diminishes my confidence. I need to learn the rules and practice (which takes time and concentration, unlike reading or listening to familiar texts). I fail miserably in the exercise forum.

Mark
--

[Quetzal]

What Quetzel says is obviously true. But, it's also the method used in this forum: it's very helpful when a vraagbaak writes the mothertongue equivalent of a Dutch sentence.

Some texts are published in many languages such as important speeches, international resolutions, papal encyclicals or the Bible. Some of these texts, the Bible obviously, have diverse Dutch translations to compare with one another which is very interesting and informative.

But, learning to speak or to write is very different from learning to read. Pronouncing Dutch was a big hurdle for me, and so for my first few weeks I worked only on diction. Inevitably, I've picked up some vocabulary that way, and pronunciation gets easier as I understand better what I'm reading. But now, I need to figure out how the language works, so that I can express myself. That's an entirely different kind of effort, and much more difficult.

Er zijn veel moeilijke dingen over het Nederlands te leren over/aan het Nederlands, maar de woordvolgorde is aan voor mij de zwaarste bevalling.
Many things are difficult to learn about Dutch; but for me, word order is the most excruciating effort (heaviest childbirth).

Recognition is different from creation. I make so many mistakes, it definitely diminishes my confidence. I need to learn the rules and practice (which takes time and concentration, unlike reading or listening to familiar texts). I fail miserably in the exercise forum.

Mark
--

Yep. Every way of learning a language is going to have its downsides in terms of things you're not so good at, I guess.

[NikkiK]

Hi.

This one is proving quite helpful, I must say.

I downloaded my Dutch browser yesterday, and so far I am finding that a fair few of the web sites I have visited this a.m. are "talking" to me in Dutch. Microsoft have even automatically offered me the Dutch version of Windows Media player.

Cool, huh ?

It is giving my brain a workout and taking things to a new level rather quickly I can tell you. My dictionary is a bit sketchy on IT vocabulary so this is excellent practise - especially as I ultimately want to work in the IT field in Europe.

And of course it is a natural opportunity to see everyday language used on a daily basis without having to consciously hunt it down. Almost effortless.

[edufuga]

I downloaded my Dutch browser yesterday, and so far I am finding that a fair few of the web sites I have visited this a.m. are "talking" to me in Dutch. Microsoft have even automatically offered me the Dutch version of Windows Media player.

This is a nice idea. A couple of days ago I changed the 'language' of my Linux box (only on my user account, of course, I don't want my family to kill me ) to Dutch, and I'm finding it ... well, funny and weird at the same time, but it's proving useful, indeed.
I also changed the Google/Gmail preferences to Dutch and at some point I remember seeing Youtube changing automatically to Dutch, so I know what you mean by "talking to you" in Dutch .

And of course it is a natural opportunity to see everyday language used on a daily basis without having to consciously hunt it down. Almost effortless.

No kidding

[Jae]

[I haven't quite gotten the hang yet of what we're supposed to write in Dutch and what we're supposed to write in English on this forum, but I'm going to do this one in English because it looks like that's what most others are choosing in this particular spot. Moderators, please give me a poke if I should ideally be writing in English where I'm writing Dutch or Dutch where I'm writing English!]

Although I'm not a language teaching and learning specialist myself, I do end up getting thrown in with them a lot (I'm an applied linguist by profession) and so I've learned a lot over the years about what works in theory. Still, it had been about twenty years (!) since I'd made any serious effort to learn a new language myself, and this meant that I've had to learn all over again what worked for me. I've been having a complete blast with it! I've tried a few things along the way that have just had me spinning my wheels, but a lot of other things have helped a lot, and still others have just been plain old fun. So I figured I'd share, just in case the other enthusiastic language geeks in this place might be interested and could benefit.

First, the things I'm doing that I think are actually making a real difference:

1. Writing in Dutch every day. It probably sounds crazy to even try this if you're a beginner, but I wanted to at least give it a shot. So I started very very small, just a very short email to a Dutch friend that took about four hours and a whole lot of concentration, a whole lot of reference to my shiny new Dutch grammar and my dictionary, and a whole lot of sweat. It was incredibly hard, but at the same time oh so incredibly satisfying to look back at it and say: Hey, I wrote something in Dutch! And after some practice, I started finding that I didn't have to look up the verb endings anymore every time I used them, or the rules on when to add an 'e' to the adjective when it comes before a noun and when not to.

As for where to find places to write, well, I started by writing emails and text messages to my Dutch friend, and then picked up a couple of pen pals over at mylanguageexchange.com, and they've been a huge help. I've also joined a couple of Dutch-speaking forums for things I'm interested in in addition to this one. But it could be anything, really, as long as you write. You could write in your diary in Dutch, or even just write something here every day. Of course it's ideal if you can get some feedback on what you're doing wrong, but you'll learn even if you don't, just because as you learn more you'll start being able to correct yourself. Just make sure to go beyond stock phrases, and really try to communicate in the language. Don't be afraid to butcher it--that's just part of the learning process. We all do it!

2. Reading in Dutch every day. Unlike writing, this was something I didn't find it quite as easy to jump into at the beginning with both feet, because at first it just seemed overwhelming. There were so many words I didn't know, and even with a background in German I had to look up every second word! But again, I started small, just a couple of very simple web pages that I worked my way through--there's lots of Dutch on the internet if you just google on something you're interested in. I also read the letters I get from my Dutch friend and my Dutch pen pals, which gives me the added bonus of really feeling like I'm communicating. This forum is a huge resource because there's a whole bunch of Dutch here, and a lot of it is translated into English, so that's probably a good place to start.

The other side of this coin is that when I stumble upon words and expressions I don't know, I don't just look them up every time, but I also write them down and transfer them into my vocabulary learning program. Which brings me to #3...

3. Finding a good vocabulary learning program. I love grammar and pronunciation--it's what I do for a living!--but vocabulary learning is the part of language learning that I find most tedious and frustrating. I'm not very good at rote memorization, and when I've learned other languages in the past, it's always been the part I've avoided as much as possible. But I really wanted to do a better job of it this time, so I went in search of a good computer program that would help me. I use a Mac, so I started with a program called "Ebbinghaus," which basically was just like the flash cards I used to make for myself twenty some odd years ago, just back and forth, back and forth, and I got really discouraged because I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.

But then I ended up having to switch to a different program called "Genius", and now I'd never go back to just the simple back and forth of something like Ebbinghaus. The thing I like best about Genius is that you can set it to "learn" mode, "review" mode, or various degrees of a combination of the two. In "learn" mode, it presents only words you don't already know, and it gives them to you several times in short succession even if you get them right (and more if you keep getting them wrong). I have found to my shock and excitement that I'm actually making progress learning vocabulary, and for that matter, enjoying doing it for the first time ever!

I don't know anything about programs for the PC, but I'm sure there are many similar ones, and like Genius, I'm sure some of them are free.

4. Google. Okay, this one sounds truly crazy, but honestly, this has been my huge secret weapon. If I want to check to make sure you can say something a certain way, I enter it into google to check whether any Dutch native speakers out there on the internet have ever said it that way. If I want to check to see whether X or Y is a more common way of saying something, I try it both ways and check the link count. If I want to figure out the subtle differences between word A, word B, and word C, I enter all three of them into google and pretty frequently it will turn up a page discussing stylistic differences. I love it. If I ever end up teaching a foreign language again, I'm definitely going to sing the praises of google to the high heavens.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing I wasn't able to do until I already knew a bit about the way Dutch is put together--you have to know enough Dutch to make a decent guess or else you'll just come up with zero hits every time. You also can't just google on the exact sentence you've written, but instead on a more generic version of the construction you're using, which meant I had to know how to change what I was saying to make it more generic (I use the asterisk wild card a lot). Finally, the other issue is that you can't just google and be done with it, you actually have to look at the pages that come up to make sure that what other people are saying is actually what you mean. But even with all of those faults, for intermediate learners google is a really wonderful (and completely accidental!) tool that I can't praise enough.

Other things I'm doing that have probably not helped quite as much as those things, but which are still fun:

1. Listening to Dutch music. It's actually really exciting to play a song over and over again as you learn more, and find that you understand more of it every time. For me it's mostly been Bløf, but if you're not into that sort of thing, there's plenty of other stuff out there.

2. Watching Dutch-language films. I'm buying the European versions of a couple of DVDs so that I can try to watch with Dutch subtitles instead of English ones (don't do this if you live outside of Europe unless you have a region-free DVD player!), but your local rental place just might have a few if you ask. And if you know the tricks of bittorrent and are willing to play a bit fast and loose with copyright, you can always download things.

3. Getting technology to speak Dutch to me. NikkiK mentioned this recently, too, so I know I'm not alone in this one! But so far, I switched my computer's operating system, my web browser, my facebook settings, and the settings for the small handful of forums I participate in to Dutch. (It sounds scary, and it is at first, but you can always switch back, right?) Even more fun, I have a GPS, and I've set it to give me directions in Dutch when I'm riding my bike to a new place. Sometimes I've had to look at the screen a bit more closely when I haven't understood what "she's" saying, but I haven't gotten lost yet!

4. Keeping a language learning diary. This is more for my future amusement so that I can keep everything together and look back later at how I progressed. But I also try to write down stuff about my various little questions and frustrations and failures and successes, so that I can evaluate how things are going and change things if I need to.

I hope that helps someone! If anybody decides to try any of these things, I'd love to hear about whether they work for you, too.

[kwalijkje]

For vocabulary, I met a guy once with a very clever approach. He bought the same book (davinci code) in his mother tongue and a translation in to the language he wanted to learn.
Then he started to read the book in the language he didn't know. Every time he didn't understand a word he took a look in the book in his native language and got the translation immediately without have to look up every single word using a dictionary.

I didn't use this method but I also learned dutch from reading booksm but I had to look up all words I didn't know.

Books I recommend are Harry Potter and any detective story. I often found that translated books are easier to understand, but that probably depends on the book.

Yeah, the majority of my Dutch has come from books and reading this site. Like Jae says, it's very very time consuming and a bit tedious looking up every second word. But it pays off. I find reading the newspaper each day has increased by vocabulary as well. Though mostly with words like 'aanhouden', and 'schietpartij'.

I've learnt German, French and Spanish in the past. And each time I was able to get hold of parallel text books, where one page has the English text, and the opposing page has the text in the language being learned.
I haven't been able to find them in Dutch, but they'd be great if I could find them. Anyone know if they exist? I'd imagine they could be found somewhere because it seems to be an important part of modern Dutch education to gain at least a working knowledge of English (I've only ever met 2 Dutchmen who haven't spoken any English).

1. Listening to Dutch music.
2. Watching Dutch-language films.
3. Getting technology to speak Dutch to me.
4. Keeping a language learning diary.

I do the first 3 all the time. It drives my English housemates slightly bonkers that I always watch film and tv in Dutch, and that they can't use my computer or phone because they're both in Dutch . Never thought of keeping a language diary. Gonna give it a go. It'd be good to have more than a pile of paper scraps to go back in reference to.

4. Google. Okay, this one sounds truly crazy, but...

No this doesn't sound crazy at all. Any time I don't understand how a word or phrase is used I google it. Even at the shortest or most unhelpful list of results there's wiktionary.

[Jae]

I find reading the newspaper each day has increased by vocabulary as well. Though mostly with words like 'aanhouden', and 'schietpartij'.

Which newspaper do you read? I keep switching, but I haven't settled on one I'm happy with yet.

[Sullivan]

I used to be able to get De Volkskrant every day in one particular shop in Dublin but they don't seem to carry it anymore.

Still, I read online when I can but I much preferred having a nice big broadsheet newspaper in front of me.

[Jae]

I used to be able to get De Volkskrant every day in one particular shop in Dublin but they don't seem to carry it anymore.

That might be a bit too high a level for me as yet, but heck, I'll give it a try. Thanks for the tip!

[kwalijkje]

Which newspaper do you read? I keep switching, but I haven't settled on one I'm happy with yet.

I used to read De Volkskrant each day, but £3.something an issue is a bit steep on a student budget. So I switched to nu.nl for now. I don't think much of the quality of reporting, but the Dutch is fairly simple, which is always good because I read it at work where there's no access to vandale.nl (or volkskrant.nl [grrr]). I love the opmerkelijk section. It reminds me of the free Metro paper in London, if you know what that is.

[Sullivan]

Haha! Opmerkelijk - the weirdo's get their 15 minutes of fame! This one was my favourite; a plumber in Tokyo who made 500 calls to a company's number because he was obsessed with the female voice on the automated phone answering system.

De loodgieter belde in totaal 3100 uur voor een totaalbedrag van ongeveer 2500 euro

That's over 6 hours on average per call! Crikey.

One thing that makes me feel slightly at home, in an odd sort of way, whenever I'm in London is the small army of determined Metro distributers at every tube station. They're all over the place here too.

[kwalijkje]

Haha! Opmerkelijk - the weirdo's get their 15 minutes of fame! ...
One thing that makes me feel slightly at home, in an odd sort of way, whenever I'm in London is the small army of determined Metro distributers at every tube station. They're all over the place here too.

One of todays stories made me laugh a bit:

Een Amerikaan die met een bestrijdingsmiddel de insecten in zijn huis te lijf wilde gaan, heeft daarbij zijn hele appartement opgeblazen.

There are more than just Metro distributors now: The London Paper, The London Lite, The Sun (20p a pop), The Evening Standard. And where these guys aren't standing there are Chuggers (Charity Huggers) in place.

Er zijn nu meer dan Metrouitdelers: The London Paper, The London Lite, The Sun (20p per stuk), The Evening Standard. En waar deze mensen zijn staan niet, de Chuggers staat er in plaats van.