A Distraction at the Bus Stop

I’ve always been fascinated by languages, and over the years I’ve had a go at so many of them. However, I’d never truly learned another language. And at the beginning of the year I really needed something to engage my brain, and both smallhobbit and sanguinity had mentioned using Duolingo. The idea of learning a language again gave me a burst of enthusiasm so I thought I would give it a go. I’d known about Duolingo for a long time but I had never visited their website. I was surprised by how many languages they had available now, though in the end I decided to go with a familiar language—Dutch.

Dutch was the first language I ever attempted to learn on my own, at about the age of 12. (My late mother had introduced me to a little French and there was French at secondary school.) I learnt it for a while but at that point I had very limited materials to learn it from. I came back to it a couple of times in later life but I still never progressed terribly far before moving on to another language. And I’ve always wanted to be at least bilingual. It occurred to me after I made the decision to go back to Dutch that time was getting on. If I wanted to have a fluent second language I needed to focus.

I have to say I’m thrilled with how well the Duolingo course has worked for me. After coming up to seven months of learning/relearning I’m in no way fluent but often Dutch words and phrases are there in my head without having to struggle to retrieve them. Word order is coming naturally. As well as the Dutch course itself being excellent, Duolingo in general is so good at getting you to go back and do the necessary revision while still making it feel like you’re moving forwards.

But it isn’t just Duolingo that is helping me learn Dutch. There is just so much available online now. (I think the last time I was seriously learning another language was Norwegian somewhere between 2000-2003, and I was so excited that I could listen to Norwegian radio and read Norwegian newspapers online.) I’d had in my mind that there might be a few old illegally uploaded Dutch TV programmes on YouTube. And well, there are. But they are far outnumbered by all the contemporary stuff. On YouTube, I’ve listened to children’s songs, contemporary pop music, watched clips of the Dutch Bert & Ernie from Sesamstraat, modern reworkings of fairy tales, Pieter Post (Postman Pat), Thomas de Stoomlocomotief and the odd cooking programme. But more than that, I can watch programmes via the NPO site (Nederlandse Publieke Omroep—Dutch Public Broadcasting) and other Dutch sites. Some things I don’t have access to because of the rights situation—only people in the Netherlands are able to view them—or because you have to pay to view them. But that still leaves an enormous amount of stuff. And unsurprisingly, it’s so much easier to pick up a language when you’re hearing it spoken naturally every day, and you’re hearing new words in context.

I’m now at the point where if I’m watching a programme aimed at very small children—not too difficult vocabulary and not too fast—I can understand what’s being said. And for other programmes up to an adult level, with the use of Dutch subtitles I can generally follow what’s going on. It’s a start. When I sometimes feel a little despondent about my progress, I look back and I can see the huge strides I’ve made. Towards the beginning of my studies I watched a sci-fi sitcom on NPO. At first the subtitles were too fast for me, let alone the speech—the subtitles just seemed to be flying by before I had a chance to analyse them. As the episodes went by I thought oh, the characters have stopped talking so quickly and so much—there are fewer subtitles now. The penny eventually dropped that no, actually it was my reading speed and knowledge of Dutch sentence structure that was increasing, so I had time to examine each sentence as it went past. I always remind myself now that I am making progress every day even if some days it doesn’t feel like it.

Obviously when looking for programmes to watch I wanted to concentrate on the funny stuff. And I seem to have hit a very rich seam in children’s programmes. A particular favourite is De Boterhamshow (The Sandwich Show—a boterham is an open sandwich which is, not exclusively I think, eaten for breakfast). It is a breakfast talk show for very young school children (all pre-recorded—not live). It is hilarious. I love it so much. It’s done with such sophistication—it’s aimed at young children but is equally enjoyable for the adults watching with them. All the characters are puppets (not strictly speaking muppets but made by the Jim Henson workshop). There’s Opper de Pop (Haystack the Puppet) who is the host. (Not actually a haystack, just yellow and shaggy.) He’s so witty, and cynical when necessary, but also rather sweet and supportive with nervous members of the audience. There’s his sidekick ‘Kick’, who is a monkey, and excitedly but efficiently does the breakfast news and the weather, and communicates with Wil van der Stoep who is sweetly dim and attempts to do the traffic news. And also there’s Berny the studio manager, who is based on a real life studio manager called Tommy Byrne—born in Ireland but who has lived in the Netherlands for about 40 years, which is pretty much his entire adult life. Berny speaks both Dutch and English, to teach the children a few English words and phrases. He’s really rather competent though does often amusingly panic when things go wrong. As they do on many, many occasions.

Every episode begins with a variation on Berny being outside with the studio audience and telling them they can’t come in till he gives the signal. Then he demonstrates what the signal will be, when he gives the signal… And well, naturally things get a little confused and the audience stampedes in and through the building towards the studio. It’s funny every time. Every time. And the finale to every programme is Opper asking Peter Allesweter (Everything-knower) what day it is. And every day Peter gets it wrong three times and is then shot out of a cannon…

Here’s a clip on YouTube (not involving stampedes or getting shot out of a cannon) if you want a taste of the madness. One of the guests is being a little too eager for their turn…

I am also currently making my way through a non-fiction book: Het Geheim van de Schrijver (The Secret of the Writer) by Renate Dorrestein, who sadly died just this May. It’s partly autobiographical, partly about her own work and partly advice for beginner writers. I’m assuming the level of the book is that it’s aimed at the intelligent adult reader. I’ve taken some online advice I saw and I’m not going painfully through the book looking up every single word I don’t know. I’m just trying to read as normal, looking up the occasional word here and there and trying to understand the rest from context. There are an awful lot of words I don’t know yet and there are often whole chunks I can’t follow. But I am never completely lost, so this gives me hope that eventually I will understand Dutch at an adult level.

Growing up only speaking English, other people speaking other languages seemed magical. But now I realise it’s really just a case of you learn some words, learn how to put them together, learn more words, and keep practising it all. Though, even when I don’t have to translate a Dutch phrase to understand it, I’m still very aware of the words and feel like I’m on the outside of the language. I may not have to put the sentence into English but it’s still a foreign language for me. I’m curious to see if it’ll ever be possible for me to ‘not notice’ Dutch, in the same way I’m not always aware of English, and just go straight to the meaning behind it.