Dutch language

Well, dutch people really like it when people try to speak/learn our lanuage. But its really difficult to learn. The thing is why would you learn Dutch when almost all the people speak English (at least a bit). Living here is nice but nothing special. Maybe you can live with your family for a bit. The woman like all people here are pretty direct and sometimes a bit manly in how they handle things. But in the end they are pretty good.

>>1200588
The Netherlands seems like a nice place to live/retire it's either that or Poland or Latvia. Thanks for giving me insight!

>>1200495
>whether i should bother learning the language
I nearly speak it just from watching Dutch crime mysteries x6. I dare say it's an easy language, and that also everyone speaks English. If your goal is really to be bilingual elsewhere, it's considered the rule that 7 years of immersion is what it takes to be at the same level you are with your native language. If I was 25% something, not even that far removed? I'd of course enjoy immersion in part of my heritage like that. Move there permanently? Probably not, unless love life intervened or career opportunities. Europe in general seems to have a few countries kind of suffering from mass immigration. It might be a changed Europe in 10 years, so might even enjoy 1-2 years now versus later in your life.

>>1200495
Unless you plan to actually live in Flanders or the Netherlands, you don't actually need to learn the language. Dutch people like to claim their language is notoriously hard to learn, but if you are dedicated you can learn it just fine bar some minor errors most Dutch people make from time to time as well. Since you are an Anglo, your pronunciation will be off though - but that's okay.

Pretty much everyone can speak basic or decent English, and most higher educated Dutch people won't have any major trouble with speaking English. In fact, most expats who live here and make a (minor) effort to learn the language tend to be suprised by the fact that Dutch people will just talk back in English to them. However, you cannot really integrate into Dutch life or society without being capable of speaking Dutch. Most paperwork and administrative things are all in Dutch, as are virtually all other things in daily life. Few Dutch really speak English flawlessly. Following politics, culture or reading most literature is impossible without being able to speak the language. So yes, you could get by perfectly well without being able to speak Dutch if you live in, say, Amsterdam or Rotterdam, but you would not have any friends outside of aforementioned groups.

On living in the Netherlands: it's pretty great. Everything is within max. 2-3 hours travelling. The weather's alright, more rain than you're accustomed to, but no freezing winters and it tends to be 20 degrees centigrade plus in summer. Public transit is fairly well, and education, welfare and the pension system are too.

I'm not sure whether there are any groundbreaking cultural differences between Australia and the Netherlands. Most expats/immigrants tend to say one of the following things: Dutch directness, the way they use their agendas to schedule everything, the difficulty of making friends when you're older than 25, rudeness, arrogance, relatively egalitarian and open-minded.

If you ever want to move to the Netherlands, better start learning Dutch now. It's really easy for English natives.

I'm an immigrant/expat/whatever we're called, living in the Netherlands.

The Dutch go from "oh no need to bother with our language, it's easier if we speak English" to "it's great that you speak Dutch! now we talk more easily!" real quick, and the latter always seems more genuine.

I know people who have been living in the Netherlands for over 10 years without speaking the language. Is it possible? Yes. Do they seem happy? Kind of. Are they included? No way. They get worse jobs, they don't get access to the best educational paths, they have to hire Dutch speaking tax advisors. Complain they don't get good treatment in healthcare, etc etc

The Dutch language itself is really easy, what is hard is that beginners have next to no chance of practicing the language. People think they are nice for switching to English when somebody doesn't speak Dutch well, but really all that does is preventing the person from getting better at Dutch. Not blaming anyone here, I would also go the easier route probably. So it's not like Italy where you only know how to say buongiorno and everyone gets a boner cause of you being oh so fluent in Italian. You have to be able to construct more complex sentences and have a decent pronunciation for the Dutch to go 'okay maybe I can continue talking Dutch to this person'.

When you somehow get to an intermediate level, then people are much more helpful letting you practice with them. To get to that level... Old people help a lot, the ones who forgot English. Other immigrants can help, they know how hard it was... Language classes, meetup groups, etc.

>>1200495
>>1200608
Regarding the cultural differences; What I have noticed as a Dutch guy myself when talking or hanging our with Australian guys is that they tend to REALLY blend in well. Australians are quite direct themself.

I think both the Dutch and Australians have this "fuck it" mentality in general. Not sure how to explain this.

On the learning stuff, I got a Korean girlfriend who uses youtube to learn Dutch now and then. So there should be plenty of easy video courses around to get you started. If she can do it with such a gap between her language and Dutch, you should be able to learn it easily.

Okay, I'm >>1200610, basically wanted to say this >>1200608

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>>1200610
On the implicit culture stuff; Try not to stay too much in the big cities if you really want to experience The Netherlands and the culture. Amsterdam might have some areas that are really Dutch, but central Amsterdam is mostly a big mix of cultures that are far from what the countryside offers in terms of "real" Dutch communities and culture.

>>1200619
Agreed fully. It's also easier to practice Dutch outside of bigger cities.

>>1200588

Dutch is actually not hard to learn for an English native. Youre just parrotting what all Dutch people say.

Perfecting Dutch is a different story, but once you reach fluency it doesnt matter anyway.

The languages share a lot of words, with a slight different pronuncation:

Bank = bank, cat = kat, water = water, cow = koe, milk = melk, I can = ik kan

Same goes for grammar and sentence structure. All extremely similiar.

Theres a great book my uk friend used to learn Dutch to day-to-day fluency in like 6 weeks. Ill ask him what the name was and report back.

cheers and good luck!

>>1200495
>Not sure if this is the right places to be asking this. I'm 3/4 Dutch but born/raised in Australia, is it worth learning the Dutch language I have secondary family over there. Any Dutchies have any advice of whether i should bother learning the language
Depends on how long you want to stay here. Longer than 6 months? I'd say start learning dutch.
>or eventually moving/living there?
Its pretty comfy here, But hey, I'm trying to get out of here.
>What are the women like?
Tall, pretty reasonable (not crazy feminist like sweden). As an Aussie, you're going to get your dick wet.

Try to stay out of Amsterdams international bubble if you actually want to integrate into Dutch society.

stay away we don't want aussies

Not trying to hijack the thread btw. I'm a Norwegian considering doing my master's degree in Leiden. Is it a good idea? I've been learning Dutch on Duolingo for some weeks, I aim at being able to hold a basic conversation by the time I move there (which should be next fall).

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You can provoke roughly three different reactions when approaching natives of your target language, often depending on the language.

-The natives are not really used to foreigners learning their language and react enthusiastically. Quite often you get smothered by a torrent of words because they expect you to be completely fluent just from uttering some broken phrases. This is especially true to people that don't have a lot of contact with foreigners.

-The second type of reaction you get stems most of the time from speakers of major world languages that are wildly studied. These natives expect nothing less but complete flawlessness and take personal offence at you butchering their language.

-The last type concerns certain populations that often speak foreign languages themselves but are not really used to foreigners learning their language. They often prefer to flex own language skills instead of helping you. Sometimes these people react confused and question your motivations.

The Dutch fall into category three.

>>1200607
Yeah I agree, the immigration has really ruined and probably will highly ruin the traditional heritage/values European countries hold. Thanks for the help!.
>>1200608
>>1200610
>>1200610
>>1200612
>>1200630
>>1200660
>>1200889
Thanks for your responses, it helped greatly.

>>1200495
No its a useless language. Learn german instead or spanish

t. Nederlander

>>1200899
I started German a couple of months ago, but realized how cucked the country had become with their handing of the'refugees' and the migrants. Not sure if they can recover or not?

>bother learning the language.
Well if you are not going to live in the Netherlands it's pretty useless and I think it would be more productive to learn a language like spanish or chinese.

>What are the women like
More direct, just like the dutch men. But there isn't a dutch women archetype, there are many kinds. Girly or more sporty + lots of immigrant women so sandn, blacks, latina's.

>>1200856
I'm from Katwijk, it's 15 minutes from Leiden! Leiden is a great city, it's pretty central. By train going to the Hague (Den Haag) is 10 minutes. Haarlem is 20 minutes. Amsterdam 30 and Rotterdam 35. Be sure to check out villages by the sea like Katwijk (boring but cozy, and the dunes are nice) Noordwijk, Zandvoort, and Scheveningen! Also in Noordwijk there's a hostel called 'flying pig' you can smoke weed there and there are lot's of aussies and other international people.

But yeah to answer your question I think it's a great idea to learn the language and make an effort to blend in.

>>1200947
Awesome, always good to get info from people who live there.

>>1200947
>tfw your dad is from Leiden

miss that guy.

I grew up in Holland and moved to England years ago, you'd be better off learning French/German/Spanish/Chinese like other anons have said.

>>1200630
>Same goes for grammar and sentence structure. All extremely similiar

The grammar is awkward.

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>>1200495
>is it worth learning the Dutch language

fuck no

My advice: come over to holland and visit your family or whatever and if you like it, use english as your primary language for the first 4 years (literally everyone speaks english over here), after that you can try to learn dutch.

Also what other guys said, a lot of dutch WORDS are very similar to english, it's just the structure of sentences that is backwards compared to english.

so yeah, oh and holland is good in terms of everything's taken care of and clean and shit, but it's mostly not that nice weather so I think australia is better if you like sun and shit

>>1201708
Thanks

>>1200495
Do you want to comunicate with people over the age of 70?
Are you willing to learn dutch just for them?

If no then why bother?

>>1200608
>On living in the Netherlands: it's pretty great. Everything is within max. 2-3 hours travelling. The weather's alright, more rain than you're accustomed to, but no freezing winters and it tends to be 20 degrees centigrade plus in summer. Public transit is fairly well, and education, welfare and the pension system are too.
Excpect a lot of people complaining about this.

>>1200612
>Regarding the cultural differences; What I have noticed as a Dutch guy myself when talking or hanging our with Australian guys is that they tend to REALLY blend in well. Australians are quite direct themself.
Depends on the part from the Netherlands. People from the north cn have a hard time socialising (except with autistic people expect life long bonds to be formed in about 10min.). People from the posh arias are less direct, more arogant, and less tolerant (except when you belong a group which 'the media' tells you should tolerate).

>>1200619
>On the implicit culture stuff; Try not to stay too much in the big cities if you really want to experience The Netherlands and the culture. Amsterdam might have some areas that are really Dutch, but central Amsterdam is mostly a big mix of cultures that are far from what the countryside offers in terms of "real" Dutch communities and culture.
On an side note typical Amsterdamish people are found in the surrounding cities like Amlere, Amstelveen, Purmerend.

>>1200630
and them you have:
couch = bank, hangover = kater, male cat = kater

>>1200936
Germany will never recover.
They're heading for a demographic disaster.

>>1202295
It's so sad, once a great country committing cultural suicide. I would never sit back and let what those refugees do to women in your country.

>>1200495
Most dutch people can hold a conversation in english so I don't know if it will useful but don't let that stop you if you want to do it.

Dutch is fairly similar to english so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Veel succes!

>>1202337
Thanks! I'll have to think about it.