Term 2 Lesson 3!

Lesson 3 hurt my brain a little I’m not going to lie. I always take that feeling as a successful lesson, if my brain is on the brink of feeling liquified then I have tackled something new.

What we covered:

• Diminutives and how to pluralise them
• Verb conjugation of strong irregular verbs e.g. gaan, zijn, hebben
• Conjugating verbs into actual text
• Highlighting formed verbs and putting them back into infinitives

Heavy stuff right?! This weeks reading helped and I had chance to flick over it again just before class. Last night I discovered the Language Library…now I know to some that is not something they would class as exciting in the slightest but I have a soft spot for them. I haven’t been in one since I left university, i love the feeling of them. Weird isn’t it! You have to pay for membership to this library but you can visiting and work in their for free. There are two copies of everything one for lending and one for reference and they also do audio CD’s and films too. No surprise their wasn’t any Dutch films but there was ample shelf space for books. I even found a Jip en Janneke Book too!

I had one major brainfart with getting to grips with pluralising ‘fles’ according to the previous work I have done on plurals and verb changes I have learnt the rule that: If a verb has an ‘s’ or a ‘f’ at the end it will be changed into a ‘z’ or a ‘v’. After writing down; huis, huizen, huisje, huisjes. I applied the same principle; fles, flezen, flesje, flesjes. Now before you Dutch experts jump on your high horse with me I am fully away of the formulation of words such as: mot, motten and pot, potten I am well aware of doubling up in some cases. But after 10 minuets I still didn’t get why the plural of fles wasn’t flezen. In the end I worked on this principle (feel free to correct me on this bit!)

If a ‘s’ or a ‘f’ is preceded by two vowels they change to a ‘z’ or a ‘v’. If it is not preceded like this then the ‘s’ or the ‘f’ is doubled up.

e.g. huis, huisen and stof, stoffen

Now you tell me, is that the rule? I’ve slept on it and I think the fog is beginning to lift but I’m still not 100% on it.

I’m not sure what the homework is for this week but my plan so far is to go back over the verb chapters and practice the exercises, there is one after every chapter. If I can manage a few hours on this over the weekend I should be able to get my head around it all.

Here is a fun video we watched about how Facebook wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the Dutch. Its quite interesting and equally as hilarious.

 

Homework…

As I mentioned when discussing taking on my Level 2 Dutch class there would be more homework. I can still reach back into my student days to be organised enough to complete it. Time Management is one of my biggest life loves. I can organised the hell out of nothing let alone something as exciting as ‘homework’. I was a geek at school, I am a geek in life and thats something I’m happy with (LOL!).

Term 2 Lesson 2!

This week’s lesson was yet again another rather enjoyable one. We are still technically in ‘recap mode’ coving plurals and spelling. So i’ve been thinking about how I can make this blog a little more use to you Dutch Learners. I am far from a linguist expert and my Dutch isn’t really off the ground all that much. I understand what is said when I have the words in front of me but without them i struggle immensely. In my last class review I mentioned the book we where working from in class. This is all well and good but I want to tell you *what* we are using from the book each lesson. I am going to share with you the chapters we cover, in the order we cover them and any side notes I made during the class.

Cramming in the Dutch any way I can this week!

Busy old week in my world yet again! Sometimes I look at my planner and I genuinely do not have a clue how I manage to fit it all in! Another week has rolled around and tonight I am at college again. This week I truly appreciated the benefits of my iPad more than ever before (not like I haven’t had it for 3 years or anything!). Downloading my Dutch textbook onto the iPad was possibly the best thing I could have done. Places it’s come in handy:

• Around the house – it is nigh on impossible to loose your page marking if someone asks you to do something
• In waiting rooms – I’ve spent a lot of time this week at the hospital waiting around for hours on end, trust me that 3hr wait for an X-Ray doesn’t seem half as bad when you’re reading about open and closed syllables
• At the gym – First time ever I’ve taken my iPad to the gym, due to spending more of my afternoons and evenings in the hospital I have missed a lot of my favourite TV shows, 50 mins on the cross trainer isn’t too bad when your watching The Musketeers or Death Comes to Pemberly. Whilst I was cycling away on my ‘cool down’ I enjoyed recapping my vowels and consonants etc.

 

Another thing that helps top up the Dutch is reading Dutch blogs. I follow a number of different blogs and I like to follow some in Dutch too. These tend to be more fashion, lifestyle or makeup blogs nothing to intense or complicated because I can’t quite hack that just yet. Dutch Vlogs are great fun too, they are normally about 10 mins long, short and sharp, I like that.

Thats how I’ve managed to keep up this week, as hard as it has been its been fun. See you tomorrow for my Lesson 2 review.

Term 2, Lesson 1!!

Hello!!  I’ve not blogged for a few days (which is quite a long time for me!). I’ve had a crazy few weeks so I am sure you can imagine how great it felt kicking back into routine and heading back to college last night! Woohoo! I have missed my classes I don’t feel like I did enough work over the holiday but I was comforted by the fact that nobody else in the class had either. Everyone from Term 1 was there bar 3 and we had 4 newbies. With it being a more advanced class there was a few of the newbies looking a little out of their depth. Half of the battle with joining a new group is getting used to the way in which the teacher teaches!