Learning Dutch FAQ

Welcome to the wiki of Nederlands Leren / Learn Dutch. On this page, you will find Guidelines on how to learn dutch with Dutch and how to become independent in your learning. If you instead search for the Frequently Asked Question on Dutch itself, you can find it here [link].

Self learning or a professional course?
The very first step is to determine which kind of path is fit for you and your situation. This is a personal decision, but to decide if self-learning is for you, consider the following points:
 * Precisely what your goal is.
 * Your personal willpower to achieve this goal.
 * The time frame you set yourself to achieve your goal.
 * Your monetary means.

Paid Courses and cursus
If you live in the Netherlands you can find schools that are acknowledged by the government alongside their rating on inburgeren.nl. You can also check at your city hall (gemeentehuis) or get books at your local library for free [to verify].

You can find (some) paid courses in our resource page but the list is small as we are not focused on paid courses. However you can check Italky and Preply.

How do I get started? Short term planning
At the end of this page, there is a non-exhaustive breakdown of skills you should aim to acquire. It is for indicative purposes only and is not a guideline to strictly follow. It can help you determine skills you may miss out on but do not simply skim over the whole page and only take the breakdown as reference, you'd miss out on a lot.

The very first thing to ask yourself is: "Do i want to learn Dutch from the Netherlands or from Belgium?" and use resources accordingly.

A good place to start out once this is cleared out is a free course. It'll give a base upon which you can build on once you're more independent. Check the courses we compiled in our resource page, the large majority of them are fully free.

After 2-6 weeks (depending on your learning is going), you will want to complement the course with light reading of essential (but difficult!) grammar such as Dutch word order on specialized grammar websites. Buying a course book or grabbing one from your local library (free in the Netherlands if you are learning [to verify]) could give you an edge as well.

Now we'll direct you at the "Essentials" subsection of the "Tips and Tricks of the efficient learner" section. Read it but do not bother with the other tips yet, they will only become relevant later. Keep the bullet points in mind as to not start off the wrong foot. You can now bookmark this page for when you are ready to be more independent. Then you will have need for the "What's Next? Longer Term Planning". In any case, if you do put more than 10 mins per day consistently in your learning you should at most come back in 3 months.

What's Next? Longer Term Planning
After this initial phase. It's time to be more independent. No one can give you a perfect plan to follow on your own. We all learn differently and you do not have a professor in front of you to guide you and force you to work. It will be much choices but there are guidelines you should keep in mind:


 * Initially, the two most important points should be acquiring more reliable knowledge of basic grammar rules as well as pronunciation if it was not already done.
 * Always complement your course with other sources of improvement. It's good to use an online course or application to learn, but if you use only one source of knowledge you'll have shortcomings very quickly. One app or free course cannot possibly contain all you need to know over a language and you will struggle to progress.
 * Keep expanding your vocabulary consistently. Depending on persons, you can learn from around a few up to 20-25 words per day over longer periods. 20 is the recommended maximum, most people are most comfortable in the 10-15 range, from experience.
 * Consistently produce sentences, whether it be written or spoken. This is vital. Bonus point if you get feedback on your mistakes.
 * Seek situations where your mistakes will be consistently pointed at.
 * Keep acquiring knowledge of grammar, otherwise you will be stuck to simple, unnatural & unpractical sentences.
 * Determine where you need to improve and work on it. See the "determining what to improve" section for more details.
 * Learn efficiently and avoid pitfalls. Go to the "Tips and Tricks of the efficient learner" sections and seek bullet points you have not read yet.
 * Do not neglect listening and speaking.

We'll detail how to train your pronunciation a tad more as it's perhaps the least straightforward skill to train.

Ideally, the best way to progress is simply to speak with others: join voice chats and learning communities, get a talking partner through dedicated applications or make Dutch friends. At first you are limited of course, so one of the following methods may be more suited :
 * Listening to words pronunciation on specialized websites.
 * repeating words you hear in videos.
 * talking to yourself.
 * recording yourself and letting others correct it.
 * recording yourself and comparing it to videos and audio.
 * participating in reading events. (You can organize them easily on our server. Simply get any dutch text and a native or advanced learner on board to provide feedback.)

Furthermore, you can also train speaking proficiency by:
 * Chatting by messages with someone. (Being used to it helps tremendously with on-the-fly production which is essential for speech. )
 * Listening to videos and podcasts. (Listening is important for speaking and fixes your own pronunciation on what you listen to.)

On top of it, we advise you to always say the words out loud when training vocabulary.

If you feel like you wish more detailed information on learning how to learn, you can check out Paul Nation's guide which has a nice summary page 52 (note 8.1).

determining how to improve your Dutch
Sadly you are not as intelligent as a baby, while they are masterminds at learning languages, we are not. You will need to pinpoint specifically where to improve your Dutch. This section will give you the tools to compete with babies on the world stage and who knows, perhaps outdo them one day!

There are 4 commonly mentioned domains to language proficiency (Reading, Writing, Listening & Speaking) which themselves rely on varying degrees of mastery over elements of the language.


 * Reading is more focused on translation from the target language to your starting language. (1)
 * Writing is more focused on translation from the starting language to your target language (1)
 * Listening requires listening comprehension but also a good command of your already acquired vocabulary and having mapped the syllables and words to sounds.
 * Speaking requires training on how to make the sounds as well as quick production of sentences.

Listening and speaking typically can be seen as a step up of reading and writing respectively. They require a higher command of the same skills as their counterparts and, on top of it, the ability to hear and pronounce the sounds of the language. Do not be alarmed if those skills are behind your reading and writing. It is very common among learners but it is, however, an indication that focus may be needed on those two domains.

If you wish to learn on your own, it will be primordial to clearly discern the domains you wish to improve on and systematically work on their underlying components. You can determine what you need to improve by asking yourself those questions:
 * 1) Which part of my Dutch is lacking and how is it not up to expectations?
 * 2) How did I notice it?
 * 3) How can I remedy to it?

for example:
 * 1) Did you make an error? if yes:
 * 2) Was it grammatical? learn the related grammar.
 * 3) Was it a wrong word usage? Relearn the words related to the concept.
 * 4) Did you feel limited? if yes:
 * 5) Was it a lack of vocabulary? Learn the vocabulary that you missed then.
 * 6) Did you struggle to pronounce things? Go work on your pronunciation.
 * 7) Did you struggle to understand what was said to you? Go work on your listening.

It's important that you do force yourself to think that way and systematically work on your mistakes. Making mistakes is essential to progress, and that's why. It enables you to see what you need to work on. However:
 * Do not overwhelm yourself by trying to correct all your errors right away. A beginner cannot correct everything at once.
 * Be much less forgiving with yourself as you progress, it's easy to fall into plateaus because you do not make the effort to work on your mistakes, later on. A beginner cannot correct every mistake they make but an intermediate learner can.

(1) This becomes less true as you progress. You directly will think in the target language but this difference in translation 'direction' explains why there are "passive learners" who become good at listening and reading but are unable to write and speak properly. It is because they were not proactive enough and mainly internalize translation from the target language to their own language. Usually they also neglected grammar rules and thus while they can understand material they are unable to reproduce it.

Tips and Tricks of the efficient learner
Essentials:
 * 1) Do not translate things one to one. - Dutch is not English or German; All three are closely related and thus share similarly looking words and features, but are unique in their own right. English grammar is very different and the words often do not directly translate into Dutch in a one-to-one fashion. Learn instead the specific meanings conveyed by the word in your starting language (they often have multiple meanings) and learn how to express those meanings in the target language. Take the verb "to think": You may want to say it's simply "denken" but it's wrong. "to think of" as in "to have an opinion about" is "denken van" while "to think of" as in "to have in mind" is "denken aan". Vice versa: "denken om" is "to not forget", not really thinking.
 * 2) Never utilize Deep Learning chat bots to explain factual information to you. - They will very often give you wrong information. They are not good at this exercise as this is not what they are meant for. As good as they are at imitating human speech they simply are not made to be factual.
 * 3) Translators are useful tools but never use translators to translate single words and Always give them full sentences with uppercase and final dot. - It happens regularly that forgetting the uppercase or the dot lends a wrong translation. Without a full sentence it simply lacks the required context to correctly translate. The uppercase and dot are needed so that it actually knows your sentence is finished.
 * 4) Learn words alongside their grammatical gender (It has nothing to do with actual genders!) by heart. - Beside for a few helpful rules. The most important rules are here (link here to the het/de command page also).
 * 5) Do not use translators for vocabulary acquisition. - if you give them a lone word translator will be wrong. Use dictionaries.
 * 6) Learn how to break a word down to syllables in Dutch. - (see this section). No need to understand everything right away, but understand what long and short vowels are as it explains the letter doubling: kat (singular) -> katten (plural).
 * 7) Learn how to pronounce words and syllables as fast as possible. - Dutch orthography accommodates pronunciation so learning it enables you to learn both at the same time. For this, you can turn to communities or dedicated websites and listen to media sources with subs. WARNING: if Dutch has a sound you do not have your mother-tongue, you will not be easily able to hear it in Dutch. It leads to learning wrong pronunciations, the fix is however easy, just ask some reliable persons to judge and help with your pronunciation.
 * 8) Trusting natives blindly is the fastest way to get wrong information on the language. - They make great speaking and chatting partners and are excellent at telling you if a sentence feels off or right but do not trust claims by natives that aren't backed up by knowledge from trusty sources. A native can naturally be trusted, but them being native gives them no formal knowledge of the language. If you see a native being imprecise in their statement or saying "there is no rule" or "the rule isn't very clear" they probably cannot be trusted in the future. A dutch example of such behavior is natives making a d/t mistake and then claiming the rule is too difficult.

Helpful remarks:
 * 1) In English you can easily spot an adverb (i.e: deadly) and differentiate it from its corresponding adjective (dead). In Dutch, the difference is not so clear: Lot of words are both the adverbial and the adjectival form. - It holds especially true for words built through the -lijk process (to confirm): "He is quick." is "Hij is snel." while "He eats quickly." is "Hij eet snel.".
 * 2) Learning participle past (stuff like killed, eaten, launched, ...) facilitates vocabulary acquisition! you can link verbs and the related adjective formed with its its participle past! if you learn "eten" (to eat) then you can automatically learn "gegeten" (eaten).
 * 3) Gathering with other learners to role-play scenes or doing prepared talk can be invaluable as it helps both pronunciation and vocabulary acquisition.

Good practices:
 * 1) Prioritize learning common over uncommon words. You can do it easily by checking a frequency ranked list of words. - You will come across some words much more often than across others, learn them first as they will speed up your early learning phase, opening you to medias more quickly.
 * 2) Challenge yourself. - do not get sucked into the same sources all the time, it's an open door to stopping your progress! always go for material slightly above your skillset! It also goes for your sentences, try to make sentences you cannot already make!
 * 3) Use translators (intelligently). Proper usage of a translator can be invaluable. - Make sentences in Dutch yourself and then translate what you had in mind from your starting language to Dutch to see what it comes up with and how differently it formulates things. It can point you toward new grammar and vocabulary as well as pointing your own errors.
 * 4) Learn how to pronounce words. - You should always, if you have the possibility, say the words out loud every time you are learning them actively, i.e. if you are using a flashcard software.
 * 5) Utilize flashcards software. - flashcard software such as Anki are loved by language learning communities for a very good reason: spaced repetition is extremely efficient to remember words. It may not be for you, but it is suited for a large majority of learners.
 * 6) Conceptualize. - Conceptualization is simply understanding the gears of the language and it trivializes learning. An example of conceptualization: A sentence is built of blocks. A phrase/clause is one self contained 'block'. If you understand that and you know that the verb comes second in a declarative sentence then you can understand why having a subordinate clause first in a sentence causes inversion of the subject and verb: "Ik eet het [omdat het lekker is]." becomes "[Omdat het lekker is] eet ik het.".
 * 7) Rehearse. - You need to see new words very frequently at first, but as time passes by you need to see them less often. This is where spaced repetition and software such as Anki help tremendously, explaining their popularity among language learners.
 * 8) Diversify. - If you are not using multiple sources of learning you're doing it wrong.
 * 9) Make it fun. - Learning does not have to be boring. Incorporate fun activities in your learning: listen to music & podcasts, watch videos, read the news or books you like, [...]. As a sidenote, we have a list of games that are in Dutch.
 * 10) Do not brush grammar aside. - You cannot do without. Some persons will tell you that it isn't needed but they made up for the lack of formal knowledge by spending 100x the learning time learning by osmosis, it is in total more work that hindered their progress.
 * 11) Be social. - A language is all about communication, chatting and talking will improve your dutch at light speed.
 * 12) Ensure that you master what you know, practice your acquired knowledge - Using complicated grammar and vocabulary matters little to people if you make basic errors.

Attitude:
 * 1) Do not overestimate your level. - Be critical! accept your mistakes and seek to be corrected as often as possible. It's especially important for more advanced learners.
 * 2) Do not care about levels. - Learning isn't about acquiring CEFR levels (A1, A2, B1,...). Giving too much attention to a perceived level will be detrimental to your learning. Beside, nearly nobody agrees in practice on what the levels translate to even though the CEFR guidelines are clear.
 * 3) Rome was not built in one day. - It's good to have objectives but it's easy to get frustrated in language learning. Everyone experiences plateaus and getting fluent takes regular work over long periods of time, so take it easy and don't burn yourself out.

breakdown of skill
In this section we'll give a quick outlook of some of the skills to acquire during your journey. This list is not a guideline, and is not comprehensive. It does not define your level, and has nothing to do with CEFR. It's only here to help learners visualize the rough minimal amount of knowledge they should acquire during their learning.

Early-beginner:
 * Learning personal and possessive pronouns
 * Learning the notion of gender of nouns and how it affects adjectives
 * Learning basic verbs (zijn, hebben, ...) as well as some basic nouns (huis, persoon, vrouw, man, ...) and adjectives (leuk, mooi, ...)
 * Learning spelling rules and how it affects plurals
 * Learning basic word order of simple declarative sentences (statements)
 * Learning negations

Mid-Beginner:
 * Learning broader vocabulary that you will come across often (think thematically, colors, household items, ...)
 * Introducing more elements in declarative
 * Learning demonstrative pronouns
 * Understanding the notion of inversion
 * Learning how to form questions
 * Learning the imperative
 * Learning the future
 * Learning coordination conjunctions and forming more intricate sentence using aforementioned conjunctions.
 * Learning how to spot participle pasts
 * Mastering basic word order of simple declarative, negations, basic vocabulary.

Late-Beginner:
 * Learning broader common vocabulary snatched from videos and media.
 * Learning topicalization/stress/highlighting
 * Learning the 'subordinate' and 'short subclause' clauses.
 * Learning relative pronouns and 'relative' clauses
 * Learning what a separable verb is.
 * Mastering questions, the imperative, the future.

Early-Intermediate:
 * From now on you will need to always learning as much new vocabulary as possible. Begin with more common words first.
 * Learning the passive voice.
 * Learning the imperfectum, also named simple past and ovt (onvoltooid verleden tijd)
 * Learning the perfectum, also named present perfect and vtt (voltooid tegenwoordige tijd)
 * Learning the pluperfect, also named Plusquam-perfectum and vvt (voltooid verleden tijd)
 * Learning pronominal adverbs, especially er.
 * Mastering the previous skills.

Mid-Intermediate:
 * Learning how to form compound nouns
 * Learning advanced word order.
 * Seeking out grammar topics you may have missed
 * Mastering the previous skills.

Late-Intermediate:

Advanced
 * Learning idiomatic phrases
 * ironing all mistakes
 * mastering grammar

Specific advantages of living in the Netherlands
on top of the obvious advantages for learning, these are some lesser obvious advantages of living in the Netherlands:


 * you can go to your local library to get learning books for free if it's to self-learn, just see at the entry (to verify, it's hearsay)
 * speak to the elderly (there are such programs in holland).

for another page:

Belgian Dutch sources

a page for people that live there with initiatives

To do: -Show to yata and mishko (especially the breakdown of skills)

How to know if a word is De or Het?
explain what a grammatical gender is

Where to listen to Dutch?
You can do it through podcasts, free retransmission of shows on television websites, educative videos, non educative videos, listening to native talk on communities, taalcafés, online taalcafés, events, [...]. You can find a compilation of media in the resource page.

Where to find people to speak to
You can use apps made for talking such Preply, Hello talk, Tandem and many others. Otherwise if you are in the country you may be able to access programs to talk to older persons (north holland), join communities, taalcafés, online taalcafés, events, ...

I struggle to improve my grammar
Some common causes could be:
 * A lack of usage: reading grammar rules on websites is the basis to improve your grammar but on its own it's pointless, you have to use your grammar as well. For example you may learn the past tense but if you don't use it, it won't easily stick around in your mind. Production beats listening/reading here. You have to produce sentences to efficiently internalize it.
 * A misunderstanding of the rule: you'd be surprised at how many learners have a dubious understanding of grammar rules due to poor conceptualization which makes it ten times harder for them to actually learn the rule.

I struggle to learn new vocabulary
It's almost solved by simply thinking "what is the problem really?":
 * Do you fail to find new words to learn? then diversify your media sources or be more proactive in your learning.
 * Do you struggle learning the words you set out to learn? Seeing the words again and again is mostly what matters, reading them, using them in sentences (production)... There is however much more to it. You could be trying to learn too many words per day. You could have badly made flashcard, or you could not be paying enough attention to your words when learning. On top of that, persons learn differently, some retain logical link between words more easily, some images, [...]. Adapt yourself to who you are.

How to get more independent?
As an intermediate or advanced learner you are starting to have the whole world in that language in your hands. try to go on the search for movies, series, books, news articles, magazines and so on. media is an excellent way to explore vocabulary on a higher level. try looking on NPO or VRT for content.

another suggestion is to start using monolingual dictionaries like Van Dale or Prisma. those are dictionaries that have definitions in the language itself. as you get more advanced, you would want to be able to associate words with concepts that are tied to them rather than associating them with translations.

being independent is also having the right tools at your disposal. having a trusted dictionary in hand was one of the examples. another one is knowing which (re)sources to consult when having doubts. do you have a question related to grammar? you may want to consult the E-ANS (description of Dutch, available online), Taaladvies (online language advice platform with lots of language doubts answered) or even a grammar book. if you doubt how a word is spelt, you may consult Woordenlijst (official word list of Dutch). the list is exhaustive and the message is having and knowing tools you can use to deepen your knowledge.

and in the cadre of practice, of course, perhaps quite obvious, you would want to start engaging in conversations with speakers of the language. not just in language learning communities because thanks to technology today, there is a plethora of communities you can join that might fit specifically with your interests. having people to interact with may boost your motivation to learn and use the language more independently.

surrounding yourself with the language is also important. you can do this by doing the above mentioned suggestions but if you have the money, by spending time in the country where the language is spoken itself. immersion programmes, a trip or holiday, working, studying, whatever the reason or purpose of the stay

I hit a plateau, what do i do?
Beginner/intermediate learner: You probably are being too safe with your production and avoiding some constructions without even noticing it. Advanced learner: Unless your Dutch is perfect, you probably are making mistakes. Do force yourself to work on small mistakes you make, they must disappear. Are you learning idiomatic sentences? if no, do so.

I can't get people to talk to me in Dutch, where do i get speaking training?
If you live in the Netherlands and natives talk to you in English, you can gently ask to keep to Dutch if the situation befits or simply answer in Dutch that you speak no English. Do mind however that not all situations are suitable for the other person to pander to your learning needs: Your bus driver has other things to do than to try to understand your Dutch while driving through traffic if it doesn't make the cut.

Otherwise, you can join voice chats online and learning communities, getting an talking partner through dedicated apps, try to make Dutch friends, or [more stuff]

Furthermore, you can also train speaking proficiency by:
 * chatting in by messages with someone (same register of sentence production as spoken speech)
 * listening to videos & podcast (listening is important for speaking and fixes your own pronunciation on what you remember)
 * repeating words you hear in videos (pronunciation)
 * talking to yourself (pronunciation)
 * recording yourself and letting others correct it (pronunciation)
 * recording yourself and comparing it to videos and audio (pronunciation)

Written chat help tremendously with on-the-fly production which is essential for speech. Do Train vocabulary by saying the words out loud.