Learning Dutch with Duolingo

Aweh, guys!

So, a couple of days ago I finally hit the big 365 on Duolingo. I got a cute little notification congratulating me on my progress but to be honest my Dutch still sucks. I started learning before Hubby even had an interview hoping to give myself an advantage. Reading is easy but speaking and listening are so hard. “But Heather,” I hear you say, “you speak Afrikaans (kinda). Aren’t they one in the same?” Oh, my sweet summer child…

While Dutch is the mother of the Afrikaans language and there are definite similarities particularly with vocabulary but what trips me up for the most part is pronunciation. The Dutch speak like Afrikaans people raised in America with smooth delivery and lilting vowels. Also, words that look alike, do not always sound alike, mainly the “ui” sound from words like bruin (brown) and tuin (garden). In Afrikaans they are pronounced “brain” and “tain” with “ui” sounding like “ay”. In Dutch it is an “ow” sound where they are pronounced “brown” and “town”… and some “ui” words are pronounced “ay” making it very confusing.

Another issue is tenses. Afrikaans is definitely more simplified with the “ge-“ denoting past tense. In Dutch the word changes completely. Instead of “geëet” (ate), eet becomes “at”. And don’t get me started on the articles of “het” and “de” as you are shooting from the hip hoping it’s correct.

Also, since I am home most of the time, I get very little interaction with people outside of cashiers (and I usually use self-checkout anyway) which makes language acquisition very difficult. Dutch is actually very easy to read (I have made it through a lot of recipes and travel schedules in Dutch alone) and I can usually catch the gist of something. It’s the listening and speaking that are the problem. When I attempt to speak, I get all tongue tied but I’m sure once I get more confident that will improve.

That said, Duolingo has definitely helped me and it will be something I will continue. I understand how the verb changes based on first, second and third person, my vocabulary for both Afrikaans and Dutch have really improved, when I really needed to speak Dutch it came in handy and it’s nice to dedicate five minutes a day to improving myself and my language skills.