Dutch, the newest addition to the line of Living Language online courses, comes out today! Here are 5 reasons we think learning Dutch is een goed idee (good idea).
1. Dutch is spoken in more places than you might think. The Dutch language can be heard far beyond the Netherlands and its neighbor Belgium. It has official status in Suriname and the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. The closely-related (and mutually intelligible) language Afrikaans is spoken in South Africa and Namibia.
2. Dutch is easy (okay, easier) for English speakers. Dutch is our closest relative, considered even closer than German. So if you speak German and English, learning Dutch should be smooth sailing. And even if you only speak English, you’ll still have an advantage.
3. Dutch sounds cool! There are a few tricky but fun sounds in Dutch that you’ll get to practice, such as /x/ or the so-called “dorsal fricative” and the trilled /r/ sound. Here’s an example of a Dutch tongue twister (or a tongbreker in Dutch) involving a whole lot of /x/:
Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten.
We long for eighty-eight wonderful nights at eighty-eight wonderful canals.
(*You can listen to a native speaker show us how it’s done on this page.)
4. You can be a pleasant surprise! It’s true that with around 86% of the population in the Netherlands able to converse in English, you can easily travel in the Netherlands without speaking Dutch, but that’s precisely what is fun about learning Dutch. If you do speak Dutch, it will come as a surprise! And with an estimated half a million Dutch speakers living in the U.S., Canada and Australia, you may get to show off closer to home.
5. You can learn the culture as well as the language. In our Dutch course, you’ll find culture notes on a variety of topics, from the importance of punctuality, the color orange, and bicycles in Dutch culture to the relationship and history between the Netherlands and its neighbor Belgium, to holidays and food in Dutch culture and the influence of the Dutch language on English (residents of New York City will find a lot of familiar place names in this section!).