I will use Leeuwarden as an example. While on the train, the recorded announcements will say Leeuwarden so that the en sound at the end in clearly audible. The end sounds something like din from dinner.

However, when the staff make announcements, and when some people in general say Leeuwarden, the en sound gets buried and becomes more of an uh sound. So Leeuwar-din becomes Leeuwar-duh. I have noticed this often with other words and names, but not with all words ending in en and not with all Dutch speakers. If I say it like this, some people know what I am saying right away, while others do not.

Is this a regional thing? Am I imagining it? Or do people do this just to confuse me?

I'm a native speaker of Dutch, a linguist, and an experienced Dutch teacher in the U.S. As a service to the larger Internet community, I'll be offering a free Zoom class on the basics of Dutch pronunciation. Learn how to pronounce Dutch words confidently! This 2½-hour class will be geared mostly to American English speakers, but others will likely also benefit.

I'll be teaching this class twice to reach people across many time zones:

• Wednesday, September 17 at 6 pm PDT / 9 pm EDT / Thu 10 am JST / Thu 11 am EDST, which works best for folks in the U.S., Asia, and Australia.
• Sunday, September 21 at 9 am PDT / 5 pm GMT / 6 pm CET, which should work for most folks in Europe.

You can now register for this class using this Google form. You'll get a registration confirmation email. You'll receive a separate email to confirm your spot, along with the Zoom meeting information. To ensure that everyone can actively participate, there will be a 25-person limit for each session. Registrations are taken in the order in which they're received. If you sign up past that limit, you'll be added to a wait list. Depending on the number of people on that list, I may add more sessions.

I'm excited to introduce you to the basics of Dutch pronunciation on September 17 and 21!

--Ron

I came across this blog post: How I Passed My Dutch A2 Exams in 45 Days: A Guide for Busy Professionals I am curious if anyone thinks this is really realistic and possible. The writer claims to have been here for six years but "knew only few dutch words (maybe 3,4) before the preparation." While I suspect they actually knew more words than this, I am curious if it is it really possible to go from 0 to A2 in 45 days.

I have been doing Duolingo for 574 days now, with some previous starts and stops before my current run. Currently I think I will do fine at the Knowledge of Dutch Society (KNM) exam, probably OK in reading, and just OK enough in listening. Writing and speaking are the ones I am most stressed about, especially the speaking one. I do plan to do each test on different days/weeks to make preparation easier.

My work really wants me to have this all done by the end of the year, so today is the start of my knuckle down time.

Any suggestions or words of encouragement are appreciated. :-)

Fun note: I previously tried playing Dutch language lessons on repeat while I slept, or at least tried to sleep. I really cannot recommend this method. I remember *alsjeblieft* appearing in one of my dreams, but otherwise I don't think it had any lasting impact.

What are some ways to make efficient progress in Dutch, and most importantly, FEEL that progress? My husband in the position of needing more Dutch language to move up positions at work. He interviewed but is just left feeling more anxious. He is sadly a monolingual English speaker so this feels like a giant task. I think understanding will be even more important than speaking, but of course speaking will also be necessary. I'm just trying to think about if he got the job offer, what should he say he needs? Would "the nuns" even be useful at such a beginning level? I recently did the Bart de Pau summer school and thought it was quite good, and he could do the same. Anything else I'm not thinking of?

I've learned languages and know there's no magic fix. I'm just hoping my husband can figure out an efficient way to learn quickly while building confidence that this is a language that CAN be learned.

So I’ve started off with Busuu, I found it’s really helpful but I would like to go a bit more in depth. I’ve been looking into online courses but I don’t want to join a virtual classroom. I’m open to books and online courses, paid or not. I was considering TaalThuis as an option. I also use NPO to watch shows. Are there any sites or books you can suggest that will help me?

The situation. I’m a native Dutch speaker, my wife isn’t, our children grew up abroad with us. My daughter is at uni in the Netherlands doing an English-speaking programme. But despite her strong personal experience and profile, the best opportunities are there for those who speak Dutch as well.

She is quite advanced in her vocabulary and understanding. Definitely can’t have secret conversations. But totally lacks confidence to speak Dutch. She has no need for official certificates to a certain level, but want to be able to confidently converse in Dutch.

I was thinking to help her (finally, I should have done that like 16 years ago 🤣🤷‍♂️), and de nonnetjes van Vught is an option.

Are they truly renowned, or is it a myth? Are there other options to get this sorted in the next six month?

Good morning all!

I'm coming to the end of my final B1 course in East Flanders and so am starting to get conversational, as I hope to finish B2 by next year. My vocabulary is quite good but where I get stuck is sentence structure with longer and more complex sentences.

Does anyone have any tips and tricks (or even games) to help with sentences that contain : - Separable verbs with different tenses or modal verbs thrown in - different tenses that also use "er" (ervan, ertegen, ermee etc) - negations with both of the above

I realise there may be no easy answer but would be grateful for any "formula" nonetheless.

Me and my husband's dulingo this morning both contained living apples.

Why are we using this weird system of exceptions over rule of thumb? Why can't we standardise writing what you hear (-d or -t) in past perfect tense and call it a day? Why would you even need -dt to make sense of a sentence?

Ik zeg vooral "waarvoor?" omdat ik dacht dat het just was, maar ik heb gisteren op een tv programma de presentator "voor wat" horen zeggen, en nu vraag ik me af of dat ook een juiste manier is om het te zeggen.

I'm a native speaker of Dutch, a linguist, and an experienced Dutch teacher in Pacific Northwest in the U.S. As a service to the larger Internet community, I'm considering teaching a free Zoom class on the basics of Dutch pronunciation, mostly geared to English speakers.

This will be a 2½-hour class, probably on a Wednesday evening starting at 5 pm PDT or so. Or, if there's interest outside the U.S., perhaps on a Saturday or Sunday at 9 am PDT or so. (I'm nine hours earlier than the Netherlands.)

I'm trying to assess how much interest there would be for this. Please respond in this thread if you'd be interested in attending this free Zoom class. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email at [dutchinseattle@gmail.com](mailto:dutchinseattle@gmail.com).

------------------

UPDATE (7-Sep-25): Wow! I didn't expect this much interest! Based on the overwhelming response, I'll do two 2½-hour sessions: one on Wednesday, September 17 at 6 pm PDT / 9 pm EDT, which works best for folks in the U.S., and another one on Sunday, September 21 at 9 am PDT / 5 pm GMT / 6 pm CET, which should work for most folks in Europe. (If neither of those work for you, email me at [dutchinseattle@gmail.com](mailto:dutchinseattle@gmail.com). If there are enough people, I can also do a session at a Friday or Saturday night for me for everyone in Asia and Australia.)

You can now register for this class on this Google form. After registration, you'll receive a confirmation email. You'll get a separate email to confirm your spot, along with the Zoom meeting information. To ensure that everyone can actively participate, there will be a 25-person limit for each session. Registrations are taken in the order in which they're received. If you sign up past that limit, you'll be added to a wait list. Depending on the number of people on that list, I may add another session.

Thanks!
--Ron

Hello,

I am a novice learner, English first language. This sentence was provided to me by Google Translate, but I have two questions.

1. What is the purpose of "ten" in this sentence? How would the sentence change without it?

2. When do I use "grote" instead of "groot"? It's because it's an adjective.

Hi all,

I am planning to open my own Dutch school in Rotterdam for expats in a few months. I will do this together with a colleague, we both have extensive experience in teaching Dutch as a second language.

My question to you is: What is or would be important for you in choosing a Dutch school?

So Dutch is a language I've had some interest in learning because my grandparents came from the Netherlands, and so I feel a sort of connection with it even if my actual experience of Dutch culture is mostly just some snacks lol. But last time I did it I more or less lost motivation to learn because I know pretty much everyone speaks English if I ever took a vacation there and will switch to it even if you try to speak Dutch, my grandparents speak perfect English, and I don't really consume Dutch media. Like just started to feel like a bunch of work just for the sake of knowing a language I would never have any chances to use. Like I'm not really planning on living in the Netherlands tho I suppose knowing the language would be good incase the US got worse because it's my first-choice foreign country to live in if it got bad enough to be worth leaving.

Ik zie op https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/stoten dat stoten "een duw geven" betekent, maar ik zie ook dit: "Hij stuurt Dixon de touwen in met een serie stoten." En hier betekent het slaan. Dus wat is het? Het verschil tussen duwen en slaan is focking groot he.

So I just learned recently that nog can be and is the correct way of saying more in Dutch as in. Ik wil nog 3 eieren. I always thought meer was the word for more. So when then would you use meer instead of nog?

I like folk metal and traditional folk music, my favorite Dutch band is Heidevolk. Do you have any similar bands or songs that you like?

Which one do you use more daily? What is the difference? Dank je wel!

Hoi hoi iedereen :) ik wil graag mezelf testen met grammaticale onderwerpen en zoiets, maar ik kan online geen lijst vinden zoals je die bij andere talen kan vinden. Bvb, op niveau A2 zou je het verschil moeten kunnen maken tussen "die", "dat" etc, en op niveau B1 zou je vaste combinaties van werkwoorden en voorzetsels moeten kunnen onthouden. Dat zou superhandig zijn.

Dankjulliewel :D

https://youtube.com/shorts/dIpyQUc4OS0?si=LT7qR7ziQqqPMB2r

Hiya, excited to finally release a personal project of mine!! I built a monster Dutch Anki deck that (imo) blows every other deck out of the water, no question.

I combined a list of the 5000 most common words, audio pronunciation, dictionary entries, and a ton of prompting with Gemini 2.5 Pro (not slop, actually correct) -> then manually reviewed and edited.

The result is a crazy detailed deck, with each card having:

• audio + phonetics
• almost all possible meanings of each word, sorted by most frequent meaning to least (no more learning super uncommon translations by accident)
• example sentences
• usage tips, like formal/slang/regional (prevents learning loads of archaic Flemish words like I did at first)
• verb forms, plurals, gender
• synonyms/antonyms (super useful, tells you when to use synonym X and when to use synonym Y)
• common learner mistakes
• etymology
• … basically everything I could stuff in.

And it's amazing to use 🤩🤩 I think it’s ridiculously cool and I wish I’d had something like this when I started learning Dutch, although after getting to B1 level I'm now basically using this to correct all the wrong translations I learned, plus adding a lot of new very common translations I had somehow missed before.

This project also burned like €400 in AI fees so it'd be nice if it was more than just me using it lol. Check it out and give me feedback as would love to do this for other languages/applications too: AnkiWeb deck

Examples card (some meanings omitted):

I first learned to read/write/speak Dutch nearly 30 years ago and though not entirely fluent, I'd generally say that I can still do all 3 reasonably well.

I came across a phrase that Duo Lingo used repeatedly this evening in a section about reflexive verbs.

Im not sure I've ever seen or used je je in this way and I'd like to understand ot better. Can anyone explain the why and how to use this part of speech?

TIA

Hoi iedereen, my boyfriend just got his visa and is now learning Dutch with an online tutor. In a month he has a week off and wants to do a week course (in person). Does anyone has any recommendations? We live in Amsterdam