Monthly Archives: July 2012

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Alles voor slimmer bouwen – Everything for a smarter building

Alles voor slimmer bouwen – Everything for a smarter building

slim – clever, smart
(de) bouw – building, construction
bouwen – to build, to construct

And again I am not sure if “bouwen” works as a plural noun or as a verb here :\

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I took some pictures of the street and road signs during my recent trip to the Netherlands. I am going to publish them here. My plan is to try to translate each sign as literally as possible.

The pictures are not of a great quality as I was taking them with my mobile phone and mostly on the run.

The on-line resources

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Here’s a list of the on-line resources which I found useful. Some web-sites have the companion mobile applications available.

http://www.youtube.com/user/dutchforn00bs — A series of video-lessons for the beginners. A Dutch girl explains the basic topics in a funny and easy-going manner.  This was the very first portion of knowledge I got.

http://www.book2.de — A treasure for a language learner! The web-site contains lessons for studying about 50 different languages, including Dutch: “book2 corresponds to the Common European Framework levels A1 and A2 and is therefore suitable for all types of schools and students.”  There are 100 lessons with audio to go through, which cover many everyday life topics. All the audio was recorded by the native speakers (professional narrators, I suppose). There’s a great Android application which helps to study the same lessons on the go: 50 languages Android app

http://quizlet.com/subject/dutch-nederlands — Many-many flash cards with the Dutch words, created by the users of quizlet.com. Those cards can be downloaded and used off-line on an Android device. Here’s an application that I use to download, store and use the cards: Flashcards+ Android app  It’s really handy. You can create, store and use your own Flashcards as well.

http://www.vandale.nl/opzoeken — A high-quality on-line dictionary. Supports English, French, German, Spanish and some other European languages.

http://www.dutchgrammar.com — A very good free Dutch grammar reference.

http://woordenlijst.org/zoek/ — Helps to check the grammatical forms of the words. For instance, I use it to check if a noun is a “het” or a “de” one. The verb forms can also be looked up.

The Starting Point

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By the moment I already have some basic knowledge. I took a quick intensive introductory course in Dutch at a language school in June. It lasted for 2 weeks and consisted of 24 hours of classes altogether. The teacher was great, she managed to provide a very good language foundation within such a short time.

So far I know the basic grammar, I can read and pronounce most of the words I see, even if I don’t know the meaning and I have some basic vocabulary as well. Besides, I found some good on-line resources for the beginners. I’ll list them in the next post.