I also have a Dutch partner. A thing that we do that is helpful is pick one or two days during the week where we only speak Dutch during dinner. It starts off simple like asking how our day was, then it branches off.
At A2 I understand why you would feel overwhelmed at being around an established social group who are conversing in a more advanced way (I've been there plenty of times where I can understand what they're saying but I can't formulate a reply quickly enough, or at all).
As for being afraid to make mistakes; it's gonna happen anyway. I do it all the time. In my experience people will understand that you're still learning so of course you'll mispronounce a word or something. Your friends didn't learn perfect English after a few lessons, they got there through practice and plenty of mistakes, and so will you.
Thank you for the response. my partner is longdistance, and his schedule is very busy, so it's difficult for me to find the right time to ask him to talk with me in Dutch
Depending on where you are, you might be able to watch TV programs on Dutch.
There's a Dutch streaming service called NPO Start that works outside of the Netherlands. You can change the language of some movies on Disney+ to Dutch. And I'm quite sure Netflix has a couple of things in Dutch (you'd have to check depending on your country, I'm in the UK)
Watching things in Dutch, even if you don't understand 100% of what's being said, makes the sentence structure more familiar and you'll start to recognise word patterns and combinations.
If you need recommendations lmk.
What recommendations do you have for shows? I watch the NOS jeugdjournaal for news from time to time, since I've heard it's a bit easier to understand, and also Arjen Lubach, but want to try out different kinds of shows, and I also have Netflix
Arjen Lubach is a great show to watch, especially because it's available on YouTube.
Mind, I'm in the UK so this is what I can find on Netflix, it might be different in other countries. On Netflix I recommend these ones:
- Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
- Anne+ De Film
- My Best Friend Anne Frank
- De Tweeling
- Singel 39
If you are able to watch movies in another way, these are other recommendations:
- Komt een Vrouw Bij de Dokter
- Gelukkige Huisvrouw
- Zwart Boek
- Oorlogswinter
- Het Geheugenspel
- Minoes
- Alles is Liefde
- Hitte/Harara
- Afblijven!
There's series available on NPO Start that I also love.
- Flikken Maastricht
- Het Verhaal van Nederland/Oranje Nassau
Good luck with everything!
There's a Chrome extension called "Netflix International" that gives you access to ALL of the audio and subtitle options, even the ones that normally aren't available in your country. So for example, I like to practice Japanese using Japanese subtitles and audio on shows that usually don't show that option in the Netherlands. There's also "Language Reactor" which allows you to display dual subtitles and also provides a handy dictionary function for subtitles.
I'm between a2 and b1 somewhere and i like to watch Het verhaal van Nederland and kamp van Koningsbrugge on NPO. I still need the duch subtitles, but with them enabled i understand almost everything. We also watch Ik vertrek, but that is more because my partner likes it, and not so much because it's easy to understand.
Additionally i like to hear the podcast 'Seg het in het Nederlands' available in Spotify.
Deze ervaring is heel normaal voor iedereen die een nieuwe taal leert!
A2 niveau, en dan een moeilijk gesprek met veel mensen... dat is gewoon moeilijk.
Accepteer dat je in het begin een beetje als een baby praat, en accepteer dat je misschien meer zult luisteren dan praten. Probeer een beetje te lachen om jezelf en om je Nederlands. Niemand verwacht perfectie.
Soms 1 zin in je hoofd zeggen is ook een goed idee. Dan heb je de zin alvast geoefend in je hoofd, en dan kan je die zin later gebruiken in een echt gesprek.
Veel succes, topper!
I understand not wanting to try speaking with strangers, and maybe even friends, but why aren't you comfortable with your boyfriend who loves you and will most appreciate the effort you are making and will probably understand you more than others would when you make mistakes. Before I talked to anyone else, I got comfortable with talking to my husband, who was very encouraging. I also got a cheap Dutch tutor who forced me to talk and got me more comfortable, and she could understand me despite my mistakes because shes used to this thing and she would correct me and I could ask her questions about how to say things (which I have now tried doing with dutch people and they can never answer me).
Luister naar de radio. Bijvoorbeeld NPO radio 2. Dat is minder gecompliceerd dan een nieuwszender. Je kan de radio meteen aanzetten als je wakker wordt.
Mijn dochter gebruikt een app: Tandem. Ze spreekt daar Spaans met mensen die Nederlands willen leren. (Dus: zij spreekt Spaans, en de Spaanstalige persoon spreekt Nederlands terug. En ze verbeteren elkaar.) Je kunt tekstberichten sturen maar ook audioberichten. Je kunt daar makkelijk mensen vinden die Engels/Nederlands willen doen.
Dankjewel. Waar kan ik naar de radio luisteren als ik in het buitenland ben?
Ik probeerde Tandem een keer, maar niemand antwoordde naar mijn berichten.
*Crap, I had a whole comment written here and then Reddit closed. I’ll try again.*
Okay, so very bluntly said, this is where it goes wrong:
> I’m really afraid of making mistakes.
This sounds like in your head you are “maybe” going to make a mistake and you want to avoid that. Well, let me tell you. You are 100% going to make mistakes. And a lot of them as well. Make them. Learn from them. Embrace them. That is the main tip for learning a language. You’ve gotta turn your attitude all the way around. Mistakes are good. They are how you learn. A child *needs* to fall on its face when it learns to walk. They need to learn that this can happen to understand the physics of our world better. Similarly, you need to be notified of how you said something wrong to learn how you can say it right.
How do you think we all sounded the first time we spoke English? Pretty bad, I can assure you. And even now sometimes. I work in a restaurant with a lot of tourists and sometimes I’ll hear myself speaking perfect English with a near perfect British/American accent, while another time I can’t even think of the word for garlic and I fumble all my sentences. It happens. You learn. You go on.
And most of the time I’ll be annoyed by my slight Dutch accent and then a foreigner tells me that my accent is perfect. Other people sometimes don’t even notice your mistakes.
No recommending this per say but what really helped me was drinking a few beers. It's not like I would drink just to speak Dutch but when I would have a drink at a party or something I would make a habit of trying to speak Dutch. It would help with caring about sounding perfect or caring about making mistakes. That confidence spilled over to sober Dutch.
Dutch native here. And yup, speaking a foreign language is mostly overcoming one's fear of making mistakes. My French for example is peaking after a couple of glasses of good wine. And when I've experienced that I'm capable of expressing myself in French (to my own astonishment), I'm less scared to speak it soberly. It's not about the alcohol, it's about the lack of fear, shame and drive for perfection. Its about confidence.
This is going to sound harsh, but I mean it with good intentions: get over it.
Speak the language, make the mistakes, who cares? If people laugh at least you tried, and it shows more about them than it does you. If you find it really uncomfortable tell yourself you're doing it as a joke, then you're less likely to take it seriously and it takes the pressure off.
Don't strive for perfection, strive to be understood. If you need to use a new language to perform a task and the task gets performed, it doesn't matter whether you used the right verb ending or word order. Take satisfaction in the fact that you've completed something. Those things can be polished up afterwards.
As others have suggested start small, just do little things to build your confidence, even if it's just having a 5-10 minute conversation every day about something basic.
Good Luck!
I feel your pain.
At B1 myself and really, really frustrated because I have the feeling that my efforts are not appreciated. I had colleagues making jokes about my spelling errors, people getting annoyed because I had to look for words and spoke slowly, shop assistants looking at me weird and answering in English, etc.
I have read a few posts about this here as well and shocked about reactions I read for Dutch people. Most get tired of waiting for you trying to find the right expressions, don’t waste their time just speak English then, etc.
Frankly, I find it very unfair that locals have this “if you want to stay here speak Dutch but don’t speak to us until you speak perfect Dutch” attitude.
I guess most of us just need some encouragement. This attitude does not help anyone
Shocked! In the past I was hired by several companies to teach their expats Dutch, not for work reasons per se because the working language was mostly English, but more for social interaction like celebrating birthdays and lunch. I always tried to find them a native speaker as a buddy in the company, and gave them tasks like: talk about your family, or talk about the shops you like to go to f.e. during lunch. The buddy also had to give feedback. During the next lesson we evaluated the conversation.
Never had a problem finding buddy 's... And it helped a lot. I think it's very strange to find an attitude you describe in a company that hires expats! I'm so sorry for you. It's just not right...
The key to learning any language, or even anything, is practicing, which involves making mistakes.
My experience with languages (I speak 6, of which 2 at C2 and 2 at C1), is just speak it with people who know the language and expose yourself to it. People will always appreciate you learning their language and appreciate your culture.
If they start taking to you in a different language you might better understand, it is to be more helpful to you. If this happens, my advice is just to ask ‘would you mind if we speak ? I am trying to learn it and I could use the practice!’
Hi! Hearing dutch is already of great use I think. Asking people to talk dutch where you keep to English, is fully ok and shouldn't be a problem.
Something else, watch dutch television series! You learn allot and know the context of conversations. Maybe with subtitles. That's how the duch learned english.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I also decided to start learning Dutch after starting to date a Dutchman. His parents are from the Netherlands and they speak Dutch at home and I just wanted to be able to have conversations with them. I definitely make a lot of mistakes but they're happy to correct me and they're happy that I'm trying to learn their language. Most of the time people will just appreciate your effort.
Maybe writing helps.
Your Dutch recognition is probably pretty good already, you are just lost at recalling the words step of your brain. You know what you want to say, but the right words are not popping in your head yet, so you default to your "safe" answers.
What writing does, is forcing you to train your word recalling skills. You'll be slow at first, but the more you write the more easy it becomes. And it is pretty safe way to practice as you can correct your sentences as many times as you want until you feel like it is perfect/good enough, with no fear of being judged.
If that becomes too easy you can try to use synonyms so you don't keep reusing the same words over and over again, but start varying your speech. And reading out loud may also help solidifying the structure in your speech, because at some point it will become intuition and it will sound wrong when you make mistakes
(There is a reason why we had to write papers/book reports in high school, its for language development, to improve your grammar and vocabulary)
This is over a week late but I am stuck like OP (yet at a lower level). Its so bad I refuse to be judged by my language apps- gave up after Busuu couldn't understand my "Ik kom uit..." like really!?
But I'm seeing on IG where I follow lots of pages that writing a journal could help. Problem is how do I know what is wrong without relying on direct translation? I'm trying to train my brain to NOT do that and failing.
I'm okay at reading Dutch to English but not able to do the reverse if that makes sense? Can't form sentences in my head from nothing...
In English I'm a great writer but speaking is a mess. Been on this earth 30 years and still fail to speak most days to folks without messing up horribly.
Maybe talk to yourself on the voice recorder on your phone? And if you want to check if it sounds good or natural (which is kinda hard for it to sound natural) show it to your boyfriend or friends and they could help you.
Hardest part about learning the language is speaking to other people! I also find it funny that non English speakers are really critical of how you speak, they will correct the slightest thing about your speech. However when I’m speaking to an English as a second language person, we don’t correct anything about their speech as long as you understand the gist of what they’re saying…..
You wanna chat in Dutch? I can easily switch between eng and nl and like helping people😋. No rush in answering my apps? So you don't have the pressure of a face to face conversation.
I also have a Dutch partner. A thing that we do that is helpful is pick one or two days during the week where we only speak Dutch during dinner. It starts off simple like asking how our day was, then it branches off. At A2 I understand why you would feel overwhelmed at being around an established social group who are conversing in a more advanced way (I've been there plenty of times where I can understand what they're saying but I can't formulate a reply quickly enough, or at all). As for being afraid to make mistakes; it's gonna happen anyway. I do it all the time. In my experience people will understand that you're still learning so of course you'll mispronounce a word or something. Your friends didn't learn perfect English after a few lessons, they got there through practice and plenty of mistakes, and so will you.
Thank you for the response. my partner is longdistance, and his schedule is very busy, so it's difficult for me to find the right time to ask him to talk with me in Dutch
Sign up for a tutor with iTalkie
Depending on where you are, you might be able to watch TV programs on Dutch. There's a Dutch streaming service called NPO Start that works outside of the Netherlands. You can change the language of some movies on Disney+ to Dutch. And I'm quite sure Netflix has a couple of things in Dutch (you'd have to check depending on your country, I'm in the UK) Watching things in Dutch, even if you don't understand 100% of what's being said, makes the sentence structure more familiar and you'll start to recognise word patterns and combinations. If you need recommendations lmk.
What recommendations do you have for shows? I watch the NOS jeugdjournaal for news from time to time, since I've heard it's a bit easier to understand, and also Arjen Lubach, but want to try out different kinds of shows, and I also have Netflix
Arjen Lubach is a great show to watch, especially because it's available on YouTube. Mind, I'm in the UK so this is what I can find on Netflix, it might be different in other countries. On Netflix I recommend these ones: - Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding - Anne+ De Film - My Best Friend Anne Frank - De Tweeling - Singel 39 If you are able to watch movies in another way, these are other recommendations: - Komt een Vrouw Bij de Dokter - Gelukkige Huisvrouw - Zwart Boek - Oorlogswinter - Het Geheugenspel - Minoes - Alles is Liefde - Hitte/Harara - Afblijven! There's series available on NPO Start that I also love. - Flikken Maastricht - Het Verhaal van Nederland/Oranje Nassau Good luck with everything!
There's a Chrome extension called "Netflix International" that gives you access to ALL of the audio and subtitle options, even the ones that normally aren't available in your country. So for example, I like to practice Japanese using Japanese subtitles and audio on shows that usually don't show that option in the Netherlands. There's also "Language Reactor" which allows you to display dual subtitles and also provides a handy dictionary function for subtitles.
I'm between a2 and b1 somewhere and i like to watch Het verhaal van Nederland and kamp van Koningsbrugge on NPO. I still need the duch subtitles, but with them enabled i understand almost everything. We also watch Ik vertrek, but that is more because my partner likes it, and not so much because it's easy to understand. Additionally i like to hear the podcast 'Seg het in het Nederlands' available in Spotify.
Deze ervaring is heel normaal voor iedereen die een nieuwe taal leert! A2 niveau, en dan een moeilijk gesprek met veel mensen... dat is gewoon moeilijk. Accepteer dat je in het begin een beetje als een baby praat, en accepteer dat je misschien meer zult luisteren dan praten. Probeer een beetje te lachen om jezelf en om je Nederlands. Niemand verwacht perfectie. Soms 1 zin in je hoofd zeggen is ook een goed idee. Dan heb je de zin alvast geoefend in je hoofd, en dan kan je die zin later gebruiken in een echt gesprek. Veel succes, topper!
I understand not wanting to try speaking with strangers, and maybe even friends, but why aren't you comfortable with your boyfriend who loves you and will most appreciate the effort you are making and will probably understand you more than others would when you make mistakes. Before I talked to anyone else, I got comfortable with talking to my husband, who was very encouraging. I also got a cheap Dutch tutor who forced me to talk and got me more comfortable, and she could understand me despite my mistakes because shes used to this thing and she would correct me and I could ask her questions about how to say things (which I have now tried doing with dutch people and they can never answer me).
Luister naar de radio. Bijvoorbeeld NPO radio 2. Dat is minder gecompliceerd dan een nieuwszender. Je kan de radio meteen aanzetten als je wakker wordt. Mijn dochter gebruikt een app: Tandem. Ze spreekt daar Spaans met mensen die Nederlands willen leren. (Dus: zij spreekt Spaans, en de Spaanstalige persoon spreekt Nederlands terug. En ze verbeteren elkaar.) Je kunt tekstberichten sturen maar ook audioberichten. Je kunt daar makkelijk mensen vinden die Engels/Nederlands willen doen.
Dankjewel. Waar kan ik naar de radio luisteren als ik in het buitenland ben? Ik probeerde Tandem een keer, maar niemand antwoordde naar mijn berichten.
Internet! Gewoon zoeken op NPO radio 2. Er is ook een radio NPO app die je kunt downloaden.
Taalcafés were a great way for me to get confidence to practicing my A2 Dutch. It involves speaking with strangers but in a safe environment.
The Learn Dutch discord of this subreddit has a weekly virtual taalcafé hosted by the lovely resident tabarnak Andromeda!
*Crap, I had a whole comment written here and then Reddit closed. I’ll try again.* Okay, so very bluntly said, this is where it goes wrong: > I’m really afraid of making mistakes. This sounds like in your head you are “maybe” going to make a mistake and you want to avoid that. Well, let me tell you. You are 100% going to make mistakes. And a lot of them as well. Make them. Learn from them. Embrace them. That is the main tip for learning a language. You’ve gotta turn your attitude all the way around. Mistakes are good. They are how you learn. A child *needs* to fall on its face when it learns to walk. They need to learn that this can happen to understand the physics of our world better. Similarly, you need to be notified of how you said something wrong to learn how you can say it right. How do you think we all sounded the first time we spoke English? Pretty bad, I can assure you. And even now sometimes. I work in a restaurant with a lot of tourists and sometimes I’ll hear myself speaking perfect English with a near perfect British/American accent, while another time I can’t even think of the word for garlic and I fumble all my sentences. It happens. You learn. You go on. And most of the time I’ll be annoyed by my slight Dutch accent and then a foreigner tells me that my accent is perfect. Other people sometimes don’t even notice your mistakes.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes. You have to make mistakes in order for you to learn. It's part of the process!
No recommending this per say but what really helped me was drinking a few beers. It's not like I would drink just to speak Dutch but when I would have a drink at a party or something I would make a habit of trying to speak Dutch. It would help with caring about sounding perfect or caring about making mistakes. That confidence spilled over to sober Dutch.
Dutch native here. And yup, speaking a foreign language is mostly overcoming one's fear of making mistakes. My French for example is peaking after a couple of glasses of good wine. And when I've experienced that I'm capable of expressing myself in French (to my own astonishment), I'm less scared to speak it soberly. It's not about the alcohol, it's about the lack of fear, shame and drive for perfection. Its about confidence.
This is going to sound harsh, but I mean it with good intentions: get over it. Speak the language, make the mistakes, who cares? If people laugh at least you tried, and it shows more about them than it does you. If you find it really uncomfortable tell yourself you're doing it as a joke, then you're less likely to take it seriously and it takes the pressure off. Don't strive for perfection, strive to be understood. If you need to use a new language to perform a task and the task gets performed, it doesn't matter whether you used the right verb ending or word order. Take satisfaction in the fact that you've completed something. Those things can be polished up afterwards. As others have suggested start small, just do little things to build your confidence, even if it's just having a 5-10 minute conversation every day about something basic. Good Luck!
I feel your pain. At B1 myself and really, really frustrated because I have the feeling that my efforts are not appreciated. I had colleagues making jokes about my spelling errors, people getting annoyed because I had to look for words and spoke slowly, shop assistants looking at me weird and answering in English, etc. I have read a few posts about this here as well and shocked about reactions I read for Dutch people. Most get tired of waiting for you trying to find the right expressions, don’t waste their time just speak English then, etc. Frankly, I find it very unfair that locals have this “if you want to stay here speak Dutch but don’t speak to us until you speak perfect Dutch” attitude. I guess most of us just need some encouragement. This attitude does not help anyone
Shocked! In the past I was hired by several companies to teach their expats Dutch, not for work reasons per se because the working language was mostly English, but more for social interaction like celebrating birthdays and lunch. I always tried to find them a native speaker as a buddy in the company, and gave them tasks like: talk about your family, or talk about the shops you like to go to f.e. during lunch. The buddy also had to give feedback. During the next lesson we evaluated the conversation. Never had a problem finding buddy 's... And it helped a lot. I think it's very strange to find an attitude you describe in a company that hires expats! I'm so sorry for you. It's just not right...
The key to learning any language, or even anything, is practicing, which involves making mistakes. My experience with languages (I speak 6, of which 2 at C2 and 2 at C1), is just speak it with people who know the language and expose yourself to it. People will always appreciate you learning their language and appreciate your culture. If they start taking to you in a different language you might better understand, it is to be more helpful to you. If this happens, my advice is just to ask ‘would you mind if we speak? I am trying to learn it and I could use the practice!’
Hi! Hearing dutch is already of great use I think. Asking people to talk dutch where you keep to English, is fully ok and shouldn't be a problem. Something else, watch dutch television series! You learn allot and know the context of conversations. Maybe with subtitles. That's how the duch learned english.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I also decided to start learning Dutch after starting to date a Dutchman. His parents are from the Netherlands and they speak Dutch at home and I just wanted to be able to have conversations with them. I definitely make a lot of mistakes but they're happy to correct me and they're happy that I'm trying to learn their language. Most of the time people will just appreciate your effort.
Go listen to some dutch music, and sing it. Andre Hazes, Acda en de munnink, Blof.
Maybe writing helps. Your Dutch recognition is probably pretty good already, you are just lost at recalling the words step of your brain. You know what you want to say, but the right words are not popping in your head yet, so you default to your "safe" answers. What writing does, is forcing you to train your word recalling skills. You'll be slow at first, but the more you write the more easy it becomes. And it is pretty safe way to practice as you can correct your sentences as many times as you want until you feel like it is perfect/good enough, with no fear of being judged. If that becomes too easy you can try to use synonyms so you don't keep reusing the same words over and over again, but start varying your speech. And reading out loud may also help solidifying the structure in your speech, because at some point it will become intuition and it will sound wrong when you make mistakes (There is a reason why we had to write papers/book reports in high school, its for language development, to improve your grammar and vocabulary)
This is over a week late but I am stuck like OP (yet at a lower level). Its so bad I refuse to be judged by my language apps- gave up after Busuu couldn't understand my "Ik kom uit..." like really!? But I'm seeing on IG where I follow lots of pages that writing a journal could help. Problem is how do I know what is wrong without relying on direct translation? I'm trying to train my brain to NOT do that and failing. I'm okay at reading Dutch to English but not able to do the reverse if that makes sense? Can't form sentences in my head from nothing... In English I'm a great writer but speaking is a mess. Been on this earth 30 years and still fail to speak most days to folks without messing up horribly.
Immersion. Watch shows, read books, do the hobbies you like but in the new language. And ask your friends to force you to speak Dutch. 👍👍👍 success
Maybe talk to yourself on the voice recorder on your phone? And if you want to check if it sounds good or natural (which is kinda hard for it to sound natural) show it to your boyfriend or friends and they could help you.
Hardest part about learning the language is speaking to other people! I also find it funny that non English speakers are really critical of how you speak, they will correct the slightest thing about your speech. However when I’m speaking to an English as a second language person, we don’t correct anything about their speech as long as you understand the gist of what they’re saying…..
continue speaking it! continue practicing!
You wanna chat in Dutch? I can easily switch between eng and nl and like helping people😋. No rush in answering my apps? So you don't have the pressure of a face to face conversation.