LL-L "Language acwuisition" 2006.05.25 (02) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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L O W L A N D S - L * 25 May 2006 * Volume 02
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From: "Roger Hondshoven" <roger.hondshoven at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.07 (05) [E]

> > Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong  wrote:
>
> RE: Dutch as a difficult language.
> Yes Pat it is. I have no authoritative statements for you, but only my own
> experience with about 200 students in over 15 years. (Amongst them were
> three couples where one was a native English speaker and the other came
> from
> Germany)
> If we leave the matter of accent aside, learning Dutch is certainly
> difficult for English speakers and maybe not so much for speakers of
> German
> and French,-

Hi Jacqueline,

This does not tally with my experience, limited though it may be. I taught
Dutch in a secondary state school in the former Belgian Congo in the 4 final
years as a colony. The audience I had was mainly Francophone. There were a
considerable number of Flemish pupils too, some of them highly Franchified.
I concur that Dutch is a rather difficult language for Frenchspeaking people
(pronunciation and syntax being tthe main difficult points), although some
of my pupils became fairly proficient. The reason why some performed rather
poorly, I guess, was that they were prejudiced against Dutch. I had,
however, an English and an American girl in class. They had no problem
whatsoever acquiring a pretty remarkable fluency in Dutch, with just the
slightest perceptible accent - hardly perceptible I should rather say. But
then they had no aversion to learning Dutch. To them it was just another
subject that had to be dealt with.

Regards,

Roger Hondshoven

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