Back when I was selling Adopt & Embrace to a Dutch based company (Rapid Circle), I said to myself that I would learn Dutch.

As soon as I told my new Dutch colleagues that I was going to learn “Nederlands”, their reaction was… “Why?”

To be honest, that is a good question!

As I have learned since, 90%+ of the population in The Netherlands have some grasp of English. On my two trips to Amsterdam in the past 12 months, I have been able to get around, order food, talk to my colleagues… all in English.

Even if I tried to throw a “Goedemorgen” into a conversation, I would automatically hear “Good Morning” back…

I am in awe of how well spoken my Dutch colleagues are in English. I am on calls with our colleagues in The Netherlands most days, and most of them have a better grasp of English than I do!

Oh, did I mention that many of them know, three, four, or five other languages as well! Europe huh?! 🙂

Despite my initial motivation to learn Dutch as a second language being lost due to lack of necessity, fast forward 2.5 years and it is a little different now.

I have more native Dutch speaking folk in the team than I do native English speakers. I have a sense of guilt as I join our regular weekly call, hearing them speaking to each other in Dutch, then seamlessly switching to English just for me.

They say they don’t mind, but still, it bugs me that I am making them go out of their way for me.

So, over the (very wet, therefore boring) two weeks I took off for the Christmas / New Year break, I decided to start learning Dutch.

Dutch is often said to be a blend of English and German. I speak a ‘mumbly’ form of Australian English every day, and I studied three years of German in high school 27 years ago. Although, I couldn’t string more than a sentence of German together today. “Ein Bier bitte!”

So, what has my Dutch journey looked like so far?

Step 1: Try, and then get disappointed with Duolingo

As I have subsequently found out, the average modern language learner who doesn’t really understand how to learn a language starts with an app thinking it will be the silver bullet to achieve fluency. In my case it was Duolingo.

After downloading Duo onto my phone, I diligently started working through the first few exercises. I laughed as the same words came up again and again in the lessons, like “boterham” (sandwich). After 20 minutes a day, for a few days I was convinced that all people wanted to talk about in The Netherlands was sandwiches.

Over time, strange phrases started to appear. “The apple eat the sandwich.” I am sure there is some method to the madness of how the exercises were structured, but it didn’t feel like it was well thought through.

After a week of running out of hearts due to confusing single vs plural words, and getting peltered with ads, I decided to sign up to the 14-day trial of Super Duolingo.

Super Duolingo did help me both pick up the pace and learn more vocabulary through exposure and repetition. The fact that I could make (and learn from mistakes) without the fear of losing hearts meant I could spend over an hour a day working through each level.

By the end of the two weeks, I had finished the complete first level of the Dutch learning path.

Did I learn anything? Yes. Did it feel useful? Not really. And to be honest it felt very repetitive, slow, and not applicable to situations I would find myself in in the real world. I felt that it was structured in a way to keep me as a paying subscriber more than the outcome of becoming more proficient in Dutch.

I had to decide if I wanted to commit to paying for Super Duolingo to continue my learning. I just couldn’t see the value and cancelled the trial.

I had to find a ‘Plan B’.

Step 2: Discover language learning communities

There are some amazing communities of language learners across the web. YouTube and Reddit are full of them. r/languagelearning and r/learndutch have been my go-to subreddits to read about techniques to learn languages, and to discover interesting resources to support my language journey.

After watching a few videos, and reading a few posts in, I noticed the same phrase started to regularly appear.

“You don’t learn a language, you acquire it”

Random Language Learning Youtubers and Redditors

That made sense to me. Instead of trying to ‘learn’ Dutch, I should try to immerse myself in content that will give me exposure to the language.

In a work context that sounds easy, at least 1/3 of the content in SharePoint at work is in Dutch. Does it make sense yet? Definitely not.

Thankfully there are other options. A few posts in r/learndutch recommended two places to start with immersion:

• Listening to pop songs, and
• Watching kids shows with subtitles on

Which you can then supplement with:

• Building your vocabularly
• Talking with Native speakers
• Translating / digging into grammar.

I decided to try all of them at once 🙂

Step 3a: Comprehensible Input

For the past month, whenever I get a chance, and for around 30 minutes to an hour a day, I am trying to consume some / any Dutch I can. Either listening, reading, or both.

For example, when I am mowing the lawn, or driving in the car, I am listening to Snelle, Maan, Flemming, or the dozens of other interesting artists I have discovered via the Spotify Dutch Pop Mix.

There are some really great tunes on that playlist that will get stuck in your head. At first, most of them don’t make sense, but as I have been picking up vocabulary they start to make more sense.

… it is interesting how many songs there are about ‘not being able to sleep at night’, or ‘having a dream’ or ‘something we are doing this evening’. Pop songs about love, relationships etc all use similar vocabulary, so when you hear ‘slapen’, ‘droom’, and ‘vanavond’ regularly you start to pick up what the words around them mean as well.

I have also been binge re-watching shows I haven’t seen for at least 10 years since when the kids were young. Peppa Pig and Miffy! Only this time in Dutch, and with Dutch subtitles on.

The simple stories and associated visuals in Peppa Pig Nederlands, or Nijntje make it super simple to pick up new vocab, and both hear and read it in the context of sentences.

The best part, there is hundreds of hours of content there that is easy to consume, and easy to understand. What the language learning community call “comprehensible input”.

About 4 weeks in, and I can watch an entire episode of Nijntje and understand about 95% of the Dutch content (either listening or reading). Pretty happy with that. And when I watch it on the big TV, the girls have had a good time trying to figure out what Miffy is saying in Dutch (lots of “ooooh, I remember this episode”)

Another great resource is NOS Jeugdjournaal. It reminds me a lot of a TV show we watched in primary school here in Australia – Behind the News (BTN). Both are published by National Broadcasters, and they feature short news items about current events or topics, using language aimed at school kids.

What I like about watching Jeugdjournal is that just like Peppa Pig and Nijntje, you can very easily make a strong connection with the visual storytelling elements. Because the articles are about current news events that you know are taking place around the world, you can focus on the Dutch words and they immediately start to make more sense.

Beyond traditional Dutch media, there are some amazing Dutch teachers on YouTube.

JufM is one of a few that I found via conversations r/learndutch. From the very first lesson, it is all in Dutch. I have found her style of teaching a great way to pick up some of the rules of how different Dutch words work together. All structured in playlists so you can slowly build up your confidence as you learn.

Finally, when I want to stretch myself (or am sick of Peppa Pig for the day), I watch something geared more towards adults. De Arvondshow met Arjen Lubach has been interesting to watch with Dutch subtitles on. Based on my basic vocabulary (which I have picked up in “Step 3b”) I get about 20% of the jokes at the moment. And I learn a bit more about current events in the Netherlands at the same time.

The bits I do understand are pretty funny, so I can’t wait to understand more of it!

Slowly (langzaam)… Dutch is starting to make more sense… but that isn’t just because I have been watching a lot of kids TV

Step 3b: Fluent Forever sound pairs and 625 words

I was sceptical of the Fluent Forever approach when I first started it, but to be honest, this has really accelerated my learning. Fluent Forever is a language learning process that Gabriel Wyner wrote about in his book, called… Fluent Forever.

Noth that I bought the book. You can pick up the gist of the process by watching his TEDx Talk from 2018, or reading his post “How to Learn Any Language in Record Time and Never Forget it” on Tim Ferriss’s blog

“If you want to learn a language efficiently, then you need to give that language life”

Gabriel Wyner

The four stages of Fluent Forever:

• Spelling and Sound: Learn how to hear, pronounce and spell the sounds of our target language
• Learn 625 Basic Words: Learn a set of extremely common, simple words using pictures, not translations
• Learn the grammar and abstract words of your language
• Throw yourself in the deep end – reading, listening, and speaking

The key idea of the Fluent Forever method is ‘spaced repetition’. Basically, keep encountering a word and its visual representation multiple times, over a period of time, so it slowly gets retained in your long-term memory.

The way this is done is through flashcards. Simply write down the word in Dutch, and instead of writing the English translation, add an image or something visual that represents that word. Every day, slowly build up your deck of flashcards, and test yourself regularly.

625 words sounded like a lot. If I were to create the flashcards by hand it would have taken months. Instead, I paid the ~AUD $80 to subscribe to the Fluent Forever app. This made the process of creating the flashcards super simple (ie fast). Plus the app pronounces each word for you (the most commons words by a native speaker, for the less common ones, a computer-generated voice using the phenetic notation.

Not only do you visualise the word, you get to hear it as well. That way you can practice your pronunciation and have a fair idea if you are getting close to how it should sound.

The app also includes videos and lots of exercises to help you to quickly understand how different sounds in Dutch are spelt (and how different spellings, sound).

At the time of writing this post, I am on day 23 of my streak in the Fluent Forever App. I have completed my 625 words in Dutch and am now adding flashcards for new words that I am encountering every day (1671 flashcards created so far).

Based on spaced repetition over 381 different review sessions in the past 23 days, and the number of times I have correctly identified or spelt a word, the app estimates I have currently memorised about 696 words. Pushing me into CEFR A2 level from a Dutch Vocabulary point of view.

Not bad after deciding to learn Dutch about five weeks ago.

Except… I suck…. really suck at Dutch conversation.

Step 3c: Talk with native speakers

This is where I am very lucky. I have access to a pool of over 150 native Dutch speaking colleagues who are all just a Teams call away in my late afternoon and evening (due to timezones).

(If you don’t have any Dutch speakers on speed dial… iTalki is a great place to find native Dutch speakers to talk to.

The easy part was telling my team (and a few other Dutch speaking colleagues I know pretty well) “hey, from now on whenever we have a 1:1, for the first five minutes can you force me to speak Dutch”.

The hard part was actually doing it.

“Hoi, hoe gaat het?”

…

….

…….

………

ummm…..

….

“Goed?”

“Hoe, haat, haaaat, chghaaat, chkhkhaaagt… gaat het?” That ‘G’ sound is a struggle!

Thankfully all of my colleagues are super supportive (for now), and are quite happy / patient enough to watch me struggle to string a sentence or two together.

Every conversation I am learning new words, or the correct way to say things. Invaluable input into the process.

I may have started this a bit too early though, if I had learned a few more conversational phrases (vs focusing purely on vocabulary) speaking would be a lot easier.

For example, there is no point knowing what the Dutch word for Springboard Diving (“Schoonspringen”) is if you can’t use it in a sentence!

However, the struggle will help in the long run, and every conversation feels a little easier (and more comfortable) than the last.

Step 3d: Learning Dutch Grammar

This is where everything is starting to come together. And as Gabriel Wyner predicted in the Fluent Forever method, because I have a basic level of vocabulary in the memory bank, all of the grammar exercises I am doing are far easier. I am not spending time trying to figure out what words mean; I am focusing purely on the grammatical elements.

I have been using a workbook called “Basic Dutch, a Grammar and Workbook” by Jenneke Oosterhoff. I am a few chapters in and within days I am now starting to write (and speak) full sentences around familiar topics.

“Ik ben Paul. Ik woon in Brisbane, Australie. Mijn vrouw heet Kerrina. Wij heb twee kinderen – tweelings!”

Now I am not 100% sure that sentence correct, but I am confident that a Dutch speaker will somewhat understand it, correct it, and continue on with the conversation.

So far, the focus has been on the absolute basics – pronouns, basic verbs etc. But they are the building blocks that will make writing and speaking much easier over time.

There are 23 more chapters of grammar exercises to go – which I expect will take another 2 or three weeks to complete. A little bit of practice every day (blending grammar exercises, reviewing flash cards, and watching some Dutch YouTube adds up over the long run.

Step 4: Put it in to practice

I am getting to the point now where I am starting to believe that I might actually be able to use Dutch in anger soon. It will be rough. It will suck. All of my Dutch colleagues will be dying to switch into English as soon as possible… but I can see progress happening every day.

I’ll be back in the Netherlands for work in just over six weeks’ time. That will be the real test – can I read signs at Schiphol… or in the Street near Centraal… and they make sense? Can I listen into conversations and get the gist of what is being said? Can I make a fool of myself in front of my colleagues as I mess up their language in real time?

We will see 🙂

Realistically, I am nowhere near fluent enough to put my Dutch to practical use yet in the office, so this trip will just be a stepping stone to my next level of proficiency. With consistent effort, hopefully by the end of 2024, I will be able to do a short presentation in Nederlands to our Dutch team. That would be pretty cool.