1st October 2011 Today's Words

For the 200 words I want to learn this month, I need to learn about 7 words per day. Today's words are these.

Dutch	English	Comments
dom	stupid
klaar	ready, clear, evidence	It does not mean clear in the sense of see through. That is helder.
koffie	coffee
overstroming	flood	over=over, stroming=flow
dikwijls	frequent	dik=thick or dense, wijls=while, so dikiwijls is dense happening
fabriek	factory
nog eens	again, once more	nog=more eens=once.

There are still some words which I keep forgetting of the 500 I learnt in September, so I'm going to learn fewer words this month so I have more time for repetition.

End of the Month and Plans

I'm not going to learn any new words tomorrow, but use the last day of the month to review the words I've already learnt. I do keep forgetting words and muddling them up so I think it's time to take stock again.

I'm pleased with my progress this month, hitting the 500 word mark for the month. I think I will restrict myself to about 200 for October as I have to maintain those 500 words, and I also have 3 computing courses that I'm doing until the middle of December so I'm going to be quite busy.

By the end of the year, I hope to have completed the 1000 most common words list. I'm going to have to think about how I want to continue in the New Year. Will it be focusing on grammar and sentence construction, or learning more words? I might set up my own word lists on memrise to test tenses and irregular verbs.

29th September 2011 Today's Words

Dutch	English	Comments
tomaat	tomato
de lucht	the air, heaven (as in sky), fragrance	For the religious version of heaven, it's de hemel. (Hemel can be used for the heavens as well.)
de rups	caterpillar	As butterfly showed up last time, and not caterpillar, here's chrysalis to complete the sequence: de pop
fiets	bicycle	Earlier, there was fietspad.
de diamantslijper	the diamond cutter
produkt	product	Product includes the answer to a multiplication.
wiel	wheel
het is goed	it's alright
ik ga	I go
de gieter	the watering can
ik breng	I bring
carburateur	carburettor
de eigenaar	the owner	Eigen is own.
rijp	ripe

28th September 2011 Today's Words 2

A second set of words for today.

Dutch	English	Comments
de ventilator	the fan
toilet	toilet
anders	other
bloedverwant	relative	Verwant means related to, and bloed is blood.
de vlinder	the butterfly
geschikt	suitable
droog	dry
ik hoor	I hear
vrolijk	happy
binnen	inside
eerlijk	sincere	Eer means honour
hark	rake
ei	egg
olie	oil

Vocabulary - Some and Every

I'm getting quite confused with the some- and every- words so I'm going to summarise them here. I thought I might as well include the no- words as well.

Dutch	English	Dutch	English	Dutch	English
sommig(e), wat	some	ieder(e)	every	geen	none
iemand	someone	iedereen	everyone	niemand	no one
iets	something	alles	everything	niets	nothing
ergens	somewhere	overal	everywhere	nergens	nowhere
soms	sometimes	altijd	always	nooit	never

Note that the no- words, apart from none and never, are just the some- words with an n in front.

Some more words to add to this collection are

alleen - only, alone
al - all
anders - other

Some

The English word some is used to express different meanings such as certain, a few or any. There are several words in Dutch which can be used for some. They are sommige, wat, een paar, enkele and enige. I'm just going to look at sommige, wat  and een paar for the moment.

Sommige is used when some is meant in the sense of certain. (Sommig in front of het words, sommige in front of de words and plurals.)

• Sommige winkels verkoopt brood. - Some (certain) shops sell bread.
• De winkel verkoopt cakes. Sommige smaken lekker! - The shop sells cakes. Some (of them) taste delicious!
• Hij leest sommige boeken. - He reads some (certain) books.
• Sommige dingen veranderen nooit. - Some things never change.
• Voor sommig werk moet je handig zijn. - For certain jobs, you must be handy.

(Reference: http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.Id09)

Wat and een paar are used when some means a few. Wat can always be used, whereas een paar can only be used before plural nouns. Note that wat also means what, and een paar literally means a pair.
(http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.Id12)

• Hij leest wat boeken. - He reads some books.
• Hij leest en paar boeken. - He reads some (a few) books.

• Hij at wat rijst. - He ate some rice. (Present tense: eet. Past: at) Een paar can not be used here.

28th September 2011 Today's Words

Dutch	English	Comments
ieder	every
de rivier	the river, stream
meer	lake	This also means more.
de plant	the plant
bord	plate	Bord occurred earlier in nummerbord which is numberplate.
bij	near	Bij also means bee.
achter	behind
de chaffeur	the driver
uitgezonderd	except
veel	much
kussen	to kiss	Kussen also means pillow.
paard	horse	Yesterday, I mentioned paard when paired with tuig giving paardetuig which means a horse's harness.
rechts	right (directions)	Recht means straight, as in straight line, but to give directions to say straight on, it's rechtdoor.
roze	pink

27th September 2011 Today's Words

I've caught up to where I was with the other account, with just one more error. I wrote slek instead of slak for snail.

The words I've learnt today are these.

Dutch	English	Comments
vliegtuig	aeroplane	Tuig on its own means harness, or mob, although that can't be the meaning here. A flying mob? Scary! It's also used in vaartuig, where vaar is from varen which is to move on water. A harness for a horse is paardetuig, where paard is horse.
de worm	the worm, kid, tot
lekker	delicious
baan	job	Ik heb een baan. I have a job. This is paid work rather than just a job that needs to be done around the house. Ik ga naar werk. I go to work.
de pijn	the pain, sorrow
baas	boss
het tandvlees	the gum	Tand is tooth, vlees is meat so this is literally the tooth meat. As with pork, which is literally pig meat (varkensvlees), the is het since it is het vlees and the article must agree with the last part of the noun.
fout	fault	De fout also means the mistake.
dekbed	duvet	The word for blanket is deken. Although, the spelling is similar, in dekbed it's a short e and in deken a long. The verb to cover is dekken.
vrij	free	Vrij occurred earlier where it was translated as vacant.
suiker	sugar
de boot	the boat, ship, craft
de broer	the friar, brother	The plural, broers is in the Longman wordlist.
gids	guide	It means both a person who is a guide, and a TV guide. It can be used for a guidebook. Although it can be used for a manual, handleiding is more common.
iemand	someone
tezamen	together	The wordlist says te zamen but it's actually one word. It's not a particularly common word.

Writing this page has certainly helped me remember them, as has talking them over with a friend. I made one mistake when I went through the harvest stage which was to spell suiker with a z instead of an s.

26th - 27th September 2011 Today's Mistakes

I've now harvested 323 words in Dutch: The thousand most common words in Dutch. These are the mistakes I made excluding typos where I hadn't typed what I thought I had.

English	Correct Dutch	What I put	Comments
crowd	menigte	mensigte
the pork	het varkensvlees	de varkensvlees	literally: pig meat
pleasure	plezierig	pleziering
to leave	verlaten	verloren	verloren is lost
the mistake	de fout	het fout
human being	menselijk wezen	mensilijk wezen
suddenly	plotseling	spoedig	spoedig is soon
adult	volwassene	volwessene

I'm pretty sure I'm muddling up menigte, volwassene and menselijk wezen.

I've got 61 words to harvest to catch up with where I was on the other account. They aren't ready for harvesting yet so tomorrow it will be.

Vocabulary - Leave

In the word lists, there are two words given for 'leave'. The first is verlaten which means to leave. It  can mean leave in the physical sense of leaving one place for another, or in the sense of abandoning someone or something. It requires leaving something or someone.

The second word, vertrekken, can be used when you are leaving to go somewhere else, but when you are not mentioning where you are leaving.This can not be used in the sense of abandoning someone or something, although it can be used for the break up of a relationship, but perhaps not so commonly. It's more towards depart than just leave, and is also used for take off.

Verlaten is something you do to a place (or person). Vertrekken is something you do.

Examples

• De vrouw verlaat de kamer. - The woman leaves the bedroom.
• De man vertrekt naar Frankrijk. - The man leaves for France.  (literally: to France)

• De vrouw verlaat haar man. - The woman leaves her husband.
• Hij is bij haar vertrokken. - He left (departed from) her.
• Hij heeft haar verlaten. - He left (abandoned) her.
• Hij is bij haar weg. - He left her. (He is from her away.) This is possibly a more common way to express the breakup.

• De man is net vertrokken. - The man has just left - we don't know where from so it's vertrekken.
• De man heeft net het gebouw verlaten. - The man just left the building. - We know where he left so it's verlaten.
• De man is net uit het gebouw vertrokken. -  The man just left the building. - but we can use vertrekken if we say he left 'out of' the building.

• De man vertrekt uit de gebouw. - The man leaves (out of) the building.
• De man verlaat de gebouw. - The man leaves the building.

Suffixes

As I come across comparisons between Dutch, Swedish and English suffixes, I'll post them here.

Example	Meaning	Dutch	Swedish	English
waarheid	truth (lit: trueness)	-heid	-het	-ness

Mistakes in Memrise Word Lists

This is a list of mistakes I've found in the word lists in memrise. I don't know whether the corrections apply globally or just for me.

List	English	Error	Correction	Literal Translation, notes
Dutch Unit 1-3 Pearson Longman Text Book	Really?	Ech waar?	Echt waar?	Really/genuinely true  (Corrected 2011-10-04)
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	the animal	de dier	het dier	(Corrected 2011-10-04)
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	Do you speak English?	Spreekt u/jij Engels?	Spreekt u Engels / Spreek jij Engels?
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	Will you help me?	Wilt u/jij me helpen?	Wilt u me helpen / Wil jij me helpen?
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	The bushes, should be the bush		de struik	The Dutch word given is singular. The plural is struiken. (28/9/11) (Corrected 2011-10-04)
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	Radio	el radio	radio	The Dutch article is 'de'. For some reason it's in Spanish. I added another word with the correct article, but couldn't delete the old one.
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	The (light) bulb, glove  <-- it doesn't mean glove!		de gloeilamp	I think it was meant to say globe maybe?
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	the bag	the cup	de tas	This is translated as the cup which is only the case in Belgian Dutch. In NL Dutch it's  the bag.
Dutch The thousand most common words in Dutch	the bag	the rucksack	de rugzak	The translation should be rucksack or backpack, not a generic bag.

Starting Again with Memrise

Because I logged in to Memrise with my facebook login, I've decided to start again with an independent account so today I've been going through the words I've previously learnt again. I think this is useful revision.

I'm still making silly mistakes such as giving the wrong answer to German and Germany even though I do actually know that the language is Duits and the country Duitsland.

Free Online Resources

All these resources are free, although some sites do have pay options too.

http://www.specialdutch.com/ songs, stories etc
http://www.2bdutch.nl/

Grammar

http://www.dutchgrammar.com/Registration required for exercises
http://www.dutch.ac.uk/beginners.dutch.grPublish Postammar/index.php
http://www.lauraspeaksdutch.info/
http://www.learndutch.org/
http://dutchlanguage.rietvink.com/
http://www.languagetrav.com/dutch/index.shtml
http://www.learndutch.nu/
http://www.dutchtoday.com/

Vocabulary

http://www.memrise.com/ Registration required
http://www.jekanmewat.nl/
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://www.forbeginners.info/dutch/ vocabulary lists
http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Dutch_Vocabulary_Trainer - download (Dutch was on page 16 for me with 100 per page) or launch from the site (requires java)
http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Planeten_Quiz
http://users.skynet.be/bd/voc/ndls/
http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~kl044/tmain.htm with sound
http://www.digitaldialects.com/Dutch.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/dutch/guide/ with sound
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://www.transparent.com/language-resources/free-software.html?l=dutch
http://www.pronunciator.com/English/Dutch/index.html with sound

Other Useful Resources

http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html

Update:

http://www.pronunciator.com/ includes voice recognition
http://www.heardutchhere.net/LearningDutch.html
http://www.lingq.com/
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ - good for looking up parts of verbs etc
http://www.specialdutch.com/ stories and songs in Dutch
http://www.dutchpod101.com/ some free, but some pay only

Progress Report 24th September 2011

Today, I've been collecting resources for learning Dutch. I've tried a few times to learn before but it's sort of fizzled out. I love grammar, but find vocabulary very hard to learn.

At the beginning of September, someone on Google+ linked to http://www.memrise.com/. This is a vocab testing program which reminds you to revise the words you've learnt earlier. I decided I wanted to learn 300 words in September.

My progress so far is

Dutch: Dutch Unit 1-3 - Pearson Longman Text Book 61/61 words learnt.

Dutch: Dutch - The thousand most common words in Dutch 384/996 words learnt.


I do keep having to go back and check old words, especially at the moment because I have a cold and I always find I can't focus when I have a cold. I'm not too worried about this because if I can remember anything when ill, I must really know it!