LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.16 (02) [E]

Sun Feb 16 19:04:23 UTC 2003

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
 L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
 S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Wim <wkv at home.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.15 (09) [E]

Hi!

>From wim verdoold. wkv at home.nl.

A good idea might be, when learning Dutch, is to listen to the news here
is a link: http://www.omroep.nl/nos/nieuws/index.html    where you can
read the news, and listen to it too.
And look carefully at the mistakes Dutch make while writing english....
That'll show you a great deal about the language they have deep within
them..

Wim.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ruud Harmsen <rh at rudhar.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.15 (05) [E]

10:11 15-2-2003 -0800, Lowlands-L:
From: frank verhoft <frank_verhoft at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language learning

>3. Is there anybody on this list learning Dutch, and if so, what
are the
>pitfalls, (tenacious) problems etc. you encounter while studying.

I'm not, and I don't know if know if others are, but on this yahoogroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DUTCH-ENGLISH-STUDY-GROUP/
there are many people trying to learn Dutch, and a few native
speakers giving them some help.
You can access part of the list archives at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DUTCH-ENGLISH-STUDY-GROUP/messages
It may be necessary to subscribe to the group first, and log in with
a yahoo-ID, in order to be able to access these archives.

Many members of that list have (American) English as their native
tongue, but certainly not all. From the list, it emerges that among
the most difficult things for foreign learners of Dutch is the
difference between the sounds written ij/ei on the one hand, and
e/ee on the other.

Another recurring stumbling block is word order. Some people are
being taught Dutch by an instructor, and ask the native speakers on
the list if words and parts of speech in their homework sentences
are in the correct order. Often the answer is "yes they are, but
it's also correct if you put them in this other order". Then they
say "this is confusing, because our teacher said it should always be
'subject, verb, object, time clause, place clause'. If that other
order is also right, what would _you_ say is the proper set of rules?"
And then the natives say: "Rules? I don't know any rules, I only
know what sounds right and what doesn't".

And even though I agree that remembering rules can support the
learning process, foreign learners too better rely on this "gut
feeling" of what is right and what isn't. Of course it will never be
as infallible as that of a native speaker. But it can be obtained,
by reading and listening enough, by sufficient exposure to the
living language. And it is much faster than applying rules, fast
enough and automatic enough to be useful in real life active use of
the language.
--
http://rudhar.com

----------

From: Pat Reynolds <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.15 (05) [E]

> frank verhoft <frank_verhoft at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language learning
>
>3. Is there anybody on this list learning Dutch, and if so, what are the
>pitfalls, (tenacious) problems etc. you encounter while studying.

Allegedly, I have first-language command of English.  I have basic
Italian, studied French for 8 years, and utterly failed to learn it (I'm
dyslexic, and had to learn two Frenches ....), very basic Welsh.   Also
Middle English, Old English and Old Icelandic, and Latin (all only as
written languages).  I live in England, but go to the Low Countries
about twice a year.  I have friends in Gent, who tease me (they say I
speak like a Hollander).

I had three years of evening classes of Dutch, and now I'm studying by
myself.

Problems in learning: mee (daarmee, and all their kin), word-order
(especially when there is a separable verb in there, too). The unfailing
helpfulness of Dutch people in spotting that I'm not a Dutch speaker and
switching to English, or, more often, German ... [big attitude problems
with the latter - and since my German is of the phrase-book variety, at
that point I have to stop them, and ask that we switch to English
?Engels? Bent u Engels! oh - sorry hoor!'].  Vowel sounds (they are so
very close to English that I have difficulty in remembering how they go
- Dutch 'huis', for example, sounds almost identical to my English
'house'.

Things which are supposed to be difficult, and others in my class had
problems with (er, the conditional perfect tense, the sound of 'g') I
didn't find too much trouble.

Best wishes,

Pat
--
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language learning

Frank, Lowlanders,

Approaching it from the angle of a Lowlands Saxon (Low German) and German
speaker with fluent English proficiency, learning Dutch *seems* easy at
first but comes with numerous problems, in large part because it seems so
close to the aforementioned (especially LS) that actually learning it seems
almost superfluous since Dutch texts are so very easily understood.
However, not learning Dutch from the ground up leads to spotty knowledge and
poor written and spoken proficiency.

Dutch is phonologically very different from those other languages.  Two
features stand out:
(1) There is no aspiration of voiceless stops, something speakers of the
other languages find hard to replicate.
(2) In Standard Dutch, short /a/ has a back articulartion and long /aa/ has
a mid-to-front articulation, which is totally counter-intuitive and
difficult to replicate for speakers of LS and German where it is the other
way around, for speakers of English similarly.

Lexically and idiomatically, there are numerous false friends between Dutch
and the other languages.

Speakers of Northern Lowlands Saxon of Germany find Dutch very closely
related to their own language and thus tend to apply LS morphological and
syntactic rules in Dutch.  For instance, they want to omit past participial
_ge-_ as in LS (and as in a number of non-standard Dutch/Flemish dialects),
and they tend to have problems with the relative positions of auxiliary
verbs and main verbs (which in Modern LS of Germany tend to be more as they
are in German).

Personally, I find it easier to learn and use Afrikaans than to learn and
use Dutch, because Afrikaans grammar is sufficiently different (mostly by
virtue of simplification) and to necessitate more thorough study and
vigilant usage, but at the same time Afrikaans morphology is more regular
and predictable.

I hope this was helpful.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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