5 Tips for Learning Dutch

There are many well-documented reasons why learning Dutch is a good thing. I often summarise it in this way: Learning Dutch will improve in so many ways your experience while living in The Netherlands. You will feel more at home, make more friends, and enjoy life here more and it certainly can help your career and job prospects. Learning a language is a skill. And like any skill will attenuate over time if it is not used. This is so true for languages. It is all too easy to start to forget any early progress you have made with the Dutch language. I am keen to look more at this issue, so I asked an expert. Albert Both, the founder of Talencoach. I sat down with Albert for a coffee recently and asked him to give me his top five tips for learning Dutch. His answers we really useful. Read on to find out more.

Albert started Talencoach 18 years ago and has his very own methods of teaching the Dutch language to expats who come from all over the world. Albert describes his method as:

Dutch Brainwashing is like a refreshing language shower for your brain! Find out more in Albert’s free E-Book

So, here are Albert’s 5 Tips for learning Dutch.

5 Tips for Learning Dutch

1. Don’t be a Parrot

Do not learn like a parrot because all you will get is peanuts! Learning a new language is not just copying at random. It is better to learn it intelligently.

2. Start Simply

Do not focus too much on just memorising… Make sure that you really understand things first… You can never learn Dutch things that you don’t understand. Start with things that are similar to English, and then bit by bit, you can understand all the other things as well…

3. Be patient and playful

When you are too serious and too stressed, then this will slow down learning immediately. When you relax, you’ll learn a lot faster!

4. Do not focus on just one book

You can learn and discover new words everywhere… when you walk on the street, in supermarkets, close to the beach… When you are surrounded by the language you want to speak, you can pick up many things very easily if you know how to observe…

5 Be willing to look at things from different perspectives

Although Dutch has many things in common with English, there are also many differences. If you embrace the fact that differences exist, you’ll discover many intriguing things and surprises. It will help you to understand Dutch culture a lot better, all the things that surround you, and somehow, you’ll feel much better while living your life in The Netherlands!

Useful!

Thank you, Albert, for these great insights. Anything that can help more of us internationals in Amsterdam to improve our Dutch can only be a good thing! We hope readers found 5 Tips For Learning Dutch useful!

Again, you can get more tips in Albert’s free E-Book.