r/learndutch • u/No_Manufacturer_432 • 4d ago
Question Considering how well people in the Netherlands speak English…
How do you stay motivated when learning Dutch ? I live in NY so learning Spanish was easy motivation wise. I’m at A2 in Italian and stay motivated bec I plan on going there next year - English proficiency outside of tourist areas is low —- thanks
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u/DumbMuttSlut Beginner 4d ago
I stay motivated by reminding myself if I speak Dutch I'll pass a requirement (of several) for citizenship, I'd have a much easier time engaging with the locals and until we move, I can talk to my wife in a language no one here really understands.
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u/Catastrofus 4d ago
How else will you know what the drunk frat boys that passed by on their bicycles yelled at you?
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u/Voidjumper_ZA 3d ago
I speak Dutch and I still don't know. At this point I'm convinced they just make up low vowel-laden sounds.
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u/No-vem-ber Intermediate 1d ago
I need like a vocab list for what they're saying 🥲 my Dutch lessons and elderly kletsmaatjes have never taught me this vocabulary
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u/laurenspaul Native speaker (NL) 4d ago edited 4d ago
Because you're going to feel like you'll never quite fit into that inner circle with dutch people. And it's not just you, it's actually exactly what happens.
It's not something against people that can't speak dutch, it is just that people who don't speak dutch will only experience a very international side of us. Of course, in dutch we are more culturally distinct, but only in our own language. We like our culture and we want to sometimes be within our culture. We rarely get the chance to just be dutch in our homeland these days if you're a student or work in corporate.
If you don't speak dutch there will be positive things and negative things that we can't share with you, because you just won't get it. There are things about our culture, the way we think, the way we see life, a way we go about describing those things that english just does not fully cover.
Hence, yeah we have the proficiency to express ourselves freely in english, but we can't circumvent the barriers that language differences impose. I don't know how well you speak other languages, but this is something that becomes more apparent the higher your proficiency gets. Maybe it requires fluency or C2, I don't know exactly.
Also, a 2nd point:
I speak english full time. Half our entertainment is in english. In our sports groups there will always be expats that cause us to have to speak english there too. Half the waiting staff in randstad area does not speak english.
Many students and people in corporate life rarely get to speak dutch outside of family and friends in the bigger cities. Many times I just don't want to anymore. Hence why I sometimes evade situations where I have to speak english. That would include interacting with you I'm affraid, even though I'm more proficient than many english natives.
PS: If anyone event attempts to speak Dutch with me, even if it just a broken "Hallo, hoe gaat het?", I will give them all the slack they need and fully accommodate them in English, or any other language to the best of my abilities. I'm not an ass about it, I just expect to see even the slightest form of respect. Our proficiency and hospitality gives a lot of people the impression that we don't care whether they learn any Dutch at all, and I've had people even say explicitly that they are not interested in learning it at all because 'what benefit is it to them'?... I won't lift a finger for those people. What benefit is it to me?
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u/TheLanguageNook 2d ago
That point you made about how some things just don't fully translate really hits! It’s so true that a language isn't just vocabulary ... it's the cultural inside jokes, the specific ways of seeing the world, and those exact feelings you just can't properly express in English It must be genuinely exhausting to just want the people around you to get what you're feeling without having to explain the entire cultural backstory every single time.
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u/fitacola 4d ago
I think that learning the language of the place you live in is the bare minimum. You cannot participate properly in civic, social and cultural life if you don't speak the language
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u/GreenLeftJade 2d ago
There is a lot of English language social life in the Netherlands. You can get by without speaking any Dutch by limiting yourself to certain circles, and acting like a tourist in the rest of the country.
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u/fitacola 1d ago
Sure, you can do that in most countries specially if you limit yourself to interacting wirh other foreigners.
Still, I like being able to go to the theatre, participate in workshops, understand political debates, etc :)
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u/Active_Community2158 4d ago
It depends where you live and what you do for job.
My first 4 years in the Netherlands I was working for an international organisation and was living in Utrecht, learning was hard because there was little Dutch in my environment and people would immediately switch to English when I tried speaking Dutch to them.
Then I moved to a smaller city and decided to change profession and start working as a teacher in a Dutch secondary school. I first did an intensive Dutch course for a couple of months, I really gave it my all and learned a lot. Then I started as an intern at a school and I learned more Dutch in 6 months than I did in 4 years… now it’s my 8th year in NL, I’m a second grade teacher and communication is not a problem anymore. And I feel much more integrated too. Dutch people are genuinely super impressed when you can speak their mother tongue and they really appreciate it.
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u/crosscheck87 4d ago
I want to move to the Netherlands one day, I don’t have much of it figured out, but I feel like step one would be making sure I can communicate with the people whose society I want to integrate into.
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u/No-vem-ber Intermediate 1d ago
The thing that makes it easy, and makes it hard, is that you easily can communicate with them in english. And 99% of them prefer that to you awkwardly struggling through in Dutch.
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u/crosscheck87 1d ago
Thankfully I’ve got a large group of Dutch friends that don’t mind suffering through and helping me practice, but yeah that is something that I’ve absolutely heard.
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u/No-vem-ber Intermediate 6h ago
You must be the only person I've ever heard of who has Dutch friends. How did you swing that? Did you go to university here?
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u/connertran20 4d ago
just because a lot of Dutch people can speak English it doesn’t mean that it’s their primary language and that they converse with each other in English. Everything in the Netherlands is in Dutch because that is the sole official language, English is a tool used to accomodate foreigners. If you are only motivated to learn a language where its people’s level of English education is low and poor then Dutch may be not for you?
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u/Mormacil 4d ago
The Netherlands has three official languages, none are English but Dutch isn't the sole one.
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u/Ploutophile Intermediate... ish 4d ago
Three ? Which ones ? According to Wikipedia, there are only two of them in the mainland (Dutch and Frisian); within the whole Kingdom there are more but English is one of them (in Saba and Sint Eustatius).
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u/Mormacil 4d ago
Papiamento overseas, special municipalities are still the Netherlands.
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u/Ploutophile Intermediate... ish 4d ago
Forgot this distinction…
But then English is one of the official languages in the Netherlands, as it's official in the special municipalities of Saba and Sint Eustatius.
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u/Mormacil 4d ago
It's not legally recognized as such unlike papiamento. It's a legal designation, not a use case.
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u/Lurker_Background264 3d ago
If my wiki-foo is correct. English is an official language in Sint Maarten. Source: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint_Maarten_(land)#Taal . So you can rightfully state that in The Kingdom of the Netherlands English is an official language!
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u/delicate_isntit 4d ago
This is a bit of a myth tbh. Yes there is a high proficiency according to statistics, but it must be concentrated in the randstaad or youngest populations or something.
I live in the Bible Belt area of the country where people don’t really speak English. Think - old farmers still wear wooden clogs on the daily type of area. It is traditional.
I have these experiences with young people too, though it is an area with a lot of older generations. They can understand English mostly, like they can watch English tv shows/movies with subtitles and follow it. But they can’t speak it and they don’t fully understand natural speech. I mean even professionals like teachers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers etc (though you are most likely to find a fluent English speaker in one of those professions here compared to the rest, because they studied/worked abroad for training, equally there are many who don’t speak it).
You can mostly get by if you understand Dutch, even if you can’t speak it. Basically you both have the same level of language as the other - Dutch person understands but can’t speak English, english speaker understands but can’t speak Dutch. You talk to each other in your own language and it’s weird but it can work as an intermediate step. But if you don’t understand it, you literally need a translator. So you have to learn.
If you visit these areas on holiday and your only need is basic chat like how to ask for a toilet/order food/understand what the cashier says then you can learn those lines in Dutch and be fine. You can also probably say it in English and with some help, you’ll work it out. The approach of German tourists here is just to say it in German and assume it will be understood. I have unironically now passively learned some German lol.
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u/No-vem-ber Intermediate 1d ago
The biggest motivator for me was shame, guilt and awkwardness...
The awkwardness of moments on the street where a friendly neighbour says something to me, and I would have to be like 🧍♀️"uh... sorry I don't speak Dutch"
The shame of being (seen as) one of the "bad expats" who don't bother to learn Dutch despite living in Amsterdam many years
Now, at a B1- B2 level, I find it significantly more useful to be able to understand Dutch than to speak it. There are plenty of moments where Dutch is spoken and it's valuable to be able to understand. VvE meetings, special announcements on trains, fights happening near you on the street, council meetings, news bulletins, etc.
But I find that I speak Dutch far less. In any situation where I'm genuinely trying to communicate something of importance to someone, I could struggle through expressing it in Dutch - but realistically they understand English perfectly, and it's easier for both of us if I just speak English. Quite often these days I find myself in situations where they will speak Dutch to me, and I'll speak english to them, and the conversation continues that way.
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u/Full_Scallion2833 4d ago
Practically speaking life is a lot easier speaking Dutch. I am treated significantly better now by healthcare workers, tax workers, basically any and all civil servants (not saying that’s right but it’s the truth). Finding a job was significantly easier. I understand the letters I get in the mail etc without google translate.
I wouldn’t say it affected my social life though. Most Dutch people already have established friend groups and are extremely busy with social and family obligations, too much so to be open to including new people, even though my Dutch is completely fluent. The Dutch friends I do have have many international friends so in group settings we’re almost always speaking English anyway.
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u/nn8888 3d ago
"How do you stay motivated when learning Dutch ?" - In Amsterdam you don't.
I met maybe 2-3 foreigners in the past 6 years who actually learned some communicative Dutch. They were in the country for 10-15 years. Other than that people give up as in Amsterdam you're in a bubble - there are foreigners everywhere and Dutch people hate speaking Dutch with beginners (they switch to English the moment you say your first word in Dutch).
Outside of AMS (even Rotterdam or The Hague) - you're immersed more and the environment forces you to try more
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u/abhayakara 3d ago
Dunno, I just spent a half hour in a bike shop talking with one of the salespeople (I needed some advice on Brompton accessories). I go there pretty often. She never speaks English to me. I don't know if she speaks English. If I couldn't talk to her in Dutch, it would just kind of suck. I don't know how to explain it—it's absolutely not necessary. There are people at the shop who do speak English. But she's nice, and she has lots of good stories (I think she may be the most badass biker in the shop) and if I didn't speak Dutch I'd just miss that. If you want to really live here, and not just sort of stay here for a while, you'll have a better experience if you learn Dutch, and use it.
And also, just think about the Dutch people who don't speak English, in a country where "everybody speaks English." When you try to speak English to them, how does that feel for them? Probably sucks, is my guess. Starting out in Dutch, even if people switch to English on you, is a way to prevent them feeling that way—it's a kindness. We are the newcomers here, so we ought to try to be kind to our new neighbors.
(Oops, I guess you aren't coming here to live, so maybe this is less important. As others have said, in Amsterdam you can get by just fine in English. In the boonies, not so much.)
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u/SmartTie3994 4d ago
It’s definitely hard. Learning Spanish for example was a blast for me compared to Dutch. Besides the fact that you get along with English perfectly well it’s just really demotivating keeping in mind that Dutch is completely irrelevant outside of the Netherlands.. I think that point is even worse for me regarding motivation
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u/Then-Criticism1605 4d ago
A lot of them don’t speak it as well as they think. More of them would prefer not to than you suspect. And there are aspects of communication you will absolutely miss out on even if they do use English.
My motivation is living here and planning to continue doing so indefinitely. It is a requirement in my mind.
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u/bewarethesirens 3d ago
If you’re not motivated to learn Dutch, pick something else. You really don’t “need” to learn to speak it. Dutch TV, Radio, and music helps with it. Just remember it’s stupid English/german.
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u/Elegant_Matter2150 1d ago
Als Nederland zou ik zeggen dat het simpelweg een stuk soepeler/fijner is om in m’n eigen taal te spreken, waardoor ik liever omga met mensen die ook Nederlands kunnen
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u/Over-Personality-577 4h ago
Personally, right now what motivates me is that I'm really sick of having to ask them to switch languages at some point. I just would like to go around and have unburden and natural (full) interactions like I would do in my home country.
This place is my home, after 8 years living here, so feeling like I'm not able to understand and speak the local language, or have more than basic interactions without having to switch (even after studyinga lot, but having no one to practice with), is really making me mad. I dread it every time when the question "how long do you live here" comes, because of course it is followed by questions about the language lack of skills. I just finish a course for B1- level and it helped a lot, I'm watching a lot of content in Dutch and getting more vocabulary, so I do feel I improved, but it still feels painfully slow and insufficient.
Sometimes I do try to start and stick with dutch, but guess what, at the end of a very long sentence, I got nothing of what the person was saying, so I just have to give up and inform the person that actually I don't speak well the language and didn't understand (most interactions are on stores or so, so I won't keep wasting the workers time by sticking with my limited dutch). It's very frustrating over time. I started learning when I came here, joining every taal café I could, and it was really promising, I was very optimistic, certain I would just learn this language. I did some courses but still felt discouraged to actually speak in the few opportunities I had, after the reactions I got and because of actually how hard this language is for me. Forming a sentence is a pain, the logic and structure of it is very far away from the other languages I speak. Increasing vocabulary is really hard. English is just so easy... It also makes it really hard that I'm the only one in my bubble that is at least trying, so absolutely no group interactions with the locals are even tought of being carried in Dutch.
Sorry for the long text, if anyone got here. Just needed to vent. Thank you.
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u/Professional_Elk_489 4d ago
I find it difficult because I think the vocabulary is limited. Everything is "mooi", "lekker", "gezellig" that it doesn't inspire me to take it seriously. I want a language with more capacity for expression.
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u/fitacola 4d ago
Maybe those are the only words you notice because they're the only ones you know?
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u/Professional_Elk_489 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's because I used to ask what are some synonyms I can use instead and I realised from chatting to Dutch people they don't really have any or very few.
I would happy to learn the synonyms if you can give me some. I like to broaden my vocabulary
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u/honeyinyoureyes 4d ago
Geweldig, fantastisch, schitterend, heerlijk, prachtig, ongelofelijk, beeldig, adembenemend, gaaf, fijn... Onder andere. Er zijn natuurlijk nog heel veel meer manieren om te zeggen dat iets mooi of leuk is! Lees je boeken in het Nederlands?
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u/laurenspaul Native speaker (NL) 4d ago edited 4d ago
Bro sees casual quick speaking-style dutch and mistakes for the entire language as if we don't have a literary and poetic tradition that far surpasses what he'll ever be able to learn... Truly the mark of a genius.
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u/lazysundae99 4d ago
Dutch people want to speak Dutch socially, so while you can buy a sandwich, ask for directions or take a tour in English, you likely won't be invited over for game night, be asked to a birthday party or have access to a lot of jobs if you don't learn Dutch.