"Why Dutch?" you may ask...well, I thought it would be rude not to considering my partner is Dutch. I would like our future children to be able to speak both English and Dutch.
Three months ago, once I finished the Spanish skills on the Duolingo app, I made a start on the Dutch (I am not by any stretch of the imagination fluent in Spanish at all but my next project is the program my folks got me for my laptop which consists of oral/verbal tests - I get to wear a headset with a microphone - more about this in a future blog).
So far I have learnt some of the basics (Ik ben een vrouw = I am a woman / Ik ben een banaan = I am a banana / Ik ben een schildpad = I am a turtle (no joke, the last two were seriously on the app) / Ik ben het koken in de keuken = I am cooking in the kitchen / Ik spreek geen nederlands = I do not speak Dutch) all of which are important (belangrijk) phrases I will need to use in every day vocabulary.
Other important phrases include: Het is brood - It is bread / Het is lekker kaas = It is tasty cheese / Het spijt me = I am sorry / Ik houd van jou = I love you. I have now tailored the last one (as I have completed the "adverbs" section) to Ik hou zoveel van jou = I love you so much - yes I am romantic!
There are also some crazy words (other than schildpad) such as bezienswaardigheden = sights (touristy) / verpleegster = nurse / geneesmiddel = medication / kunstenaar or kunstenares (m/f) = artist, which don't seem to remotely have any hint as to what the word could be if you were just looking at the word for the first time.
The Dutch word for 22 (twenty-two) is one of my favourites because it has three of the letter "e" in a row - tweeëntwintig.
But I'm pushing on through the app and Mathijs often tests me by asking me questions to see if I can answer him in Dutch with the correct pronunciation. When we were in Holland this month I managed to order my own drink in a cafe - Mathijs was very impressed dank u wel.
I am currently on level 12 in the Duolingo app and at the same time I'm getting practice speaking with Mathijs and also trying to understand his family when they're speaking to each other in Dutch! I'm currently on a 90 day streak - full steam ahead to 100 straight days of Dutch learning! See below for some interesting sentences I've been learning.
