Een beetje... (a little bit...)
Fortunately 'een beetje' is a broad enough term that it can be used to describe my small vocabulary and broken grammar that we like to refer to as 'Dinglish'. We took lessons earlier in the year but have been on summer holiday recently, and we start again next week. I was doing some revision of last term's lessons and it's unfortunate how much of the content I've forgotten in just a few weeks without practice.
It is perfectly possible to live in the Netherlands without speaking a word of Dutch. Ninety percent of your essential interactions are possible in English, and the majority of the remainder can be done in text where Google Translate comes to the rescue. However as I attempt to become more immersed in life here, it becomes obvious how speaking Dutch would make life much easier.
Even though pretty much everyone speaks English, I'm discovering that not everyone is confident or comfortable doing so past the initial surface interactions. I've found myself quite a few times recently in social situations where I am the only, or one of very few, non-Dutch speaking people in a group, and after the initial greeting and a bit of small talk (ironically usually including questions about how the Dutch lessons are going), everyone invariably reverts back to Dutch. It seems that Dutch people don't really like speaking English to other Dutch people. I can't blame them- if you can express yourself faster and more accurately in Dutch (to 90% of the people listening) then why wouldn't you?
Anyway, it's just more motivation to work hard on the lessons. Back to the CD and texbook...
No comments:
Post a Comment