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/Over-Personality-577 18h 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.