Language Course – Week 11

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Mijn docent (my teacher) had een jarig (a birthday)!!! So once we all wished her “Gefeliciteerd!” (Congratulations) we were all treated to delicious Soesjes … think, Dutch Profiteroles. Schoonzus, correct me if I’m wrong here!

Just when you think you’ve studied and worked hard all weekend, you turn up to class to discover that you have no idea. We were handed sheets of paper with questions on them that ostensibly, we were able to answer. I must have been having an off day, or maybe it was a Tuesday (it was), because, wow. I had no idea what the words in front of me meant. It was quite disheartening and rather awful.

This happens to me sometimes when I’m thinking about Dutch. I know I should know a word, I know I’ve looked it up before, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I know this feeling goes away eventually as more and more information gets absorbed, and I go to my dictionary and look up that same word just one … more … time. But this particular night I felt more like I was drowning rather than swimming in the language that was flowing all around me.

The questions were about our weekends and how we’d spent them. Thankfully, mijn docent had read my blog, and was able to tell me what I had done. *waves at Trix*. Sometimes self-promotion is a wonderful thing.

I need to work on, not just being able to say what I have achieved in the past (remember, Het Perfectum is completed things), but also add into my sentences when I achieved things; yesterday, last week, last year … In order to give more information and make my sentences more accurate.

“Wat heb je gistermorgen gedaan?” (What did you do yesterday morning?)

“Ik ben gistermorgen in het vondelpark gelopen.” (Yesterday morning I walked in Vondel Park)

Of course, now I’m confused as to whether or not that is a zijn sentence, or a hebben one. According to the book it could go either way …

There was an embarrassing incident where I think I basically answered the question “What did you do with your friend?” with “I did my friend.” *shakes head* This is a perfect example of needing more information in my answers!

We moved on to a game of four of a kind. A deck of cards dealt out between five of us, and you had to collect all four cards from each category. I think, having played similar games in my (long forgotten) childhood, I grasped the strategy behind it a little sooner than others in the class and was remembering who had asked for what and what they were collecting. But it was a fun way to spend the last part of the lesson. It’s a really fun way to learn to inject some sarcasm into your new found language! “Nee. Sorry hoor! Ik heb hem niet!” (No. Sorry! I don’t have the card you want!)

It’s remarkably difficult to convey via written word just how much sarcasm was dripping off our answers by the end of that lesson.

We were allowed a brief reprieve on homework in honour of the aforementioned birthday, on the condition that we all worked harder at memorising the abnormal perfectum verbs for next lesson.

As it turns out though, the next lesson was cancelled on account of no teacher. So on that note, I have set up a revision with Himself (because he needs to learn the language too, and he appears to be learning it via me and these posts …), and wish Trix all the best and the hope that she gets well soon!

See you all next week! Same Fish time, Same Fish channel, for our next exciting episode!!!

Language Course – Week 10

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What a week! As is often the case I’ve found, I walked out of the first lesson of the week with the feeling that my brain was oozing out of my ears.

We began with “Hoe vaak?” (How often?) and its various responses, all the way from “altijd” (always) to “nooit” (never).

A “v” in Dutch is pronounced softly like an “f” in English, combining that sound with the long double “a” … there was much juvenile giggling, and we all proved that we’re really twelve year olds at heart. It was amusing, and time was spent figuring out how to not say vaak until we’re all more comfortable with the language.

We then moved on to separable verbs. They are made up of a simple verb and a particle. You need to know separable verbs in order to know that when used in a present tense sentence they are broken up. Backwards. So “opbellen” (literally – “up phone”, translated “call”), in a sentence becomes “Ik bel mijn moeder op.” (I call my mother up). But it is still one verb.

Then we moved on to past tense. We got as far as what is known as, the “Perfectum”. Which is how you talk about actions that are over/finished in the past. Het Perfectum consists of an auxiliary verb (hebben) and the past participle.

So, for regular verbs you end up constructing it as “ge” + stem word + “d/t”, depending on whether them stem word ends in a consonant contained in “’T KoFSCHiP”, but based on the spelling of the infinitive root word before you added “en”.

Did you get all that? How’s your Dutch spelling by the way? Yeah.

Then there are the exceptions to the rules where the stem word already begins with ge-, be-, ver-, her,- or ont-, these are ge-blockers. Then there are the separable verbs again, where the prefix goes before the “ge” …

I think you can see why I wanted whiskey after that.

We spent the second lesson of the week revising and practicing until it felt more natural to use past tense in sentences. Going through the list of words we’d been asked to put together for homework was enlightening, and I was glad I’d done it in pencil. But I only had three mistakes, and they were spelling mistakes; I’d gotten the principles down.

We practiced until break time, and after break came back to learn that our text book had a list of approximately fifty of the most used infinitief and perfectum words which don’t subscribe to the regular verb rules in the back! Hoorah! We just have to memorise them all. Boo!

On top of that, some of them also break the “hebben” rule, and are in fact “zijn”. *wince* Again, just memorise it.

Oefenen, oefenen, oefenen! Practice, practice, practice! My life has a new motto.

In other news I’m now a featured blog over on Expat Blog! And you can check me out here! I’m so excited by this!

Expat Blogs

Don’t miss this opportunity to head on over and leave a comment in the comment box at the bottom of my listing! This was used to help determine last years Expat Blog Awards Winner! So, go have a look, leave a comment, and them pass the link along to all your friends and family!

Language Course – Week 9

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It was a chill day in an Amsterdam Spring when George (that’s me) decided she should pick up the tale of partaking in a language course. She is not entirely sure why she is writing in the third person, but there you go.

Week 6 Prague – I wasn’t in lessons, but I had gotten the heads up on what we would be studying in class! Chapter 6, which was all around “modal verbs”. Though I took my books with me to Prague, I actually didn’t open them. *hangs head in shame*

Week 7 Playing catch up – I stayed home when Himself took our guests sight-seeing and attempted to make sense of the chapter while running decidedly low on sleep.

I got to class to discover that the class had had a different teacher for the last week as Trix had come down with pneumonia and would be away a while. So it seemed I hadn’t missed anything after all, as they were studying what I had been set, which makes me wonder what they had been doing while I was away. The answer I got was “plurals”, and the revision work involved supermarket shopping.

I began coughing on that Tuesday night, but kept going and was in attendance the Thursday night too. The class chapter on Thursday involved ordering a restaurant.

8 last week – The next week I was too sick to go on the Tuesday, but we moved on to the next chapter in the book which was clothes shopping and clothing nouns. So many words to remember!!!

We ended Thursday evening discussing real estate and housing. It was still with the substitute teacher too. This enabled us to have long activities surrounding prepositions. (in, on, out, beside, in front, etc)

9 this week – Trix was back! She was still not 100% poor thing, but on the mend, and not contagious anymore! We celebrated by doing revision on everything we’d done so far. It was clearly obvious after this revision, that I rely far too heavily on my books being open in front of me. Also, which sections needed work! So off I went on my merry way with a little bit of focus and worked hard at my skills until the next lesson.

The most recent lesson was more revision. Lots of word games, and I had my Nederlands to Engels translation dictionary out, and we were on a roll! Sometimes opposites are hard! But before the lesson was over we worked on when to use “geen”, and when to use “niet”. “Ik sprek geen Russisch” (I speak no Russian), and “Ik help hem niet” (I help him not).

I think I have it. Only time will tell. And practice. Lots, and lots of practice.

Homework is more revision. Only the last four chapters though. Should be a gemakkelijk karweitje! (Piece of cake!)

Language Course – Week 5

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The astute amongst you will notice that I didn’t provide an update for week 4. I made it to the first lesson that week, practiced my 150 most common verbs along with everyone else, we told stories about Willem, and then I put my back out so missed the second lesson of the week. After checking, I only needed to cover chapter four. Even with the missing lesson I didn’t seem to have any problems picking up with the rest of the class when I got there this week in time for …

Week 5, lesson 9. I knew I should have looked up how to say “sore back” as an explanation of my absence! For future reference it’s “zere rug”, and now I know. And you do too.

We began with question structure. Getting my words in the correct order for Dutch is more problematic than I hoped, but I’ll get there! I just need to stop thinking in English.

There was then some role-playing, and the ever important phrase “Kunt u langzamer spreken? Ik leer Nederlands.” (“Can you speak slower? I’m leaning Dutch.”)

After spending time running through various standard responses to frequently asked questions (“I’m off tomorrow” could be answered with “that’s nice” or “sounds enjoyable” … you get the idea) we then all stood up and mingled at the front of the classroom, pretending that we were at a cocktail party. It was remarkably amusing given how little we could converse. But then, how much depth does one go into at those things anyway?

One of the questions on our wee palm cheat sheets was “Hoe oud ben je?” (“How old are you?”) which I had mentioned to the teacher was a bit unfair (not to mention depressing) given that I’m the oldest in the class! So I have my own response to that now! “”Met de leeftijd komt de schoonheid.”(“With the age comes the beauty.”)

For homework we needed to Google (at .nl) all the various public holidays for the Nederlands. We also need to remember while doing this that days of the week and names of the months are not capitalised in Dutch unless they are “important”. For instance; vrijdag (Friday) isn’t capitalised, maar (but) Goed Vrijdag (Good Friday) is.

I had noticed this on some winkel (shop) doors where they posted their hours, but had written it off in my head as purely a design decision. Seems I was mistaken!

In lesson 10 the nitty got grittier. There is so much information to absorb in each lesson, and with each lesson building on the last, there’s ever more to revise and add to our knowledge base. First we continued working on sentence structure. We learnt that though one sentence can be said 4 ways and all will be correct, we learnt the Dutch way.

Then we moved on to learning the rules for pluralisation. Just to screw with my (and your) English mind, they do use apostrophes for plurals of words ending in vowels that aren’t “e”.

Finally we learned new sentences. We were creating sentences about hobbies, and whether we liked or didn’t like them. As with most of our classes, this ended up being quite loud and boisterous as we all spoke at the same time while trying to listen to our fellow students mangle the language.

As always, a wonderful week, and a LOT of homework for the weekend ahead! I think my brain may leak out my ears!

Language Course – Week 3

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We were straight into learning new information with our fifth lesson. I love that you are there because you want to learn, so there’s a real drive and determination to everyone who is still with the class. (We appear to have stabilised with about half of the students who attended on the first night.)

We began with having a quick test to see if we could hear the difference between words as they were being said without the spellings in front of us to guide our judgement as to whether they were long (lang) or short (kort) vowel sounds. We were paired up to check over our answers and I didn’t do too badly.

Next we moved on to how the Dutch tell the time where I discovered that not only do the Dutch have five and ten, past and to the hour, but they also have five and ten, past and to the half hour. Also, it’s not half past the hour, it’s half to the next hour. This should be all sorts of fun to get my poor noggin around!

We then moved on to infinitives. This was made even more fun as, I’m fairly sure that when I was in school no one actually classified for me what an infinitive is. I’m sure it would have been easier if I had any memory of getting up to these in the bits and pieces of the other languages I did learn in school, but what with my age when I learnt Italian, and my absences from High School for French, German and Japanese … well, you get the idea. Just one more hurdle I need to overcome.

Lesson six began well enough, with all of us trying very hard to make it all the way through ordering at a café. The pilsje (beer), bitterballen (food), wijn (wine), and koffie (coffee) should make for a goed (good) feast if it ever arrives!

I’m fairly sure that in the future, so long as the waiter talks slowly and repeats themselves multiple times, I may get through it. Wait. What do you mean this won’t be an open book test?!?

We then moved back to grammar and structure, focusing tonight on syntax. Again, I have no recollection of lessons on how to correctly structure a sentence. But here I was, unlearning what I hadn’t learnt, and relearning the Dutch way. This one I’ll have to practice a little harder. It’s a good thing I have sheets and sheets of homework to do this weekend!

Speaking of languages, Kia Ora, and Happy Waitangi Day to all the Kiwis for last Wednesday!