In any case, French people just talk English\nback at you, even when you do try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait, I need to defend myself for a second, I enjoyed <\/em>the thought of being able to\nspeak another language, I just didn\u2019t spend the right amount of time caring to\nstudy. I was 15 ok. I had better things to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s\ntime to put in the work, girl<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward to my 27th year on Earth, and I\nfind myself in a new land, with a new language. What\u2019s a girl to do? Face her\nfear and get cracking that\u2019s what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I moved, I set myself up the way anyone\nembarking on a new set of grammar rules and vocabulary does without fully\nunderstanding the weight of what\u2019s in front of them. I bought myself a little\nDutch phrasebook and downloaded the DuoLingo app. I thought it was the\nbeginning and end of my journey. Code cracked. I felt a little spark. Enthusiasm.\nButterflies. Indigestion? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Combined, these two intricate encyclopedias of\nknowledge gave me a good grasp on the basics within about 6 months. My Dutch\nskills went from zero to something, which is better than nothing. Obviously, I\ncan\u2019t give an accurate representation of how good I was after using the app and\nthe book, but let\u2019s just say that I could understand basic questions and\nconversations and order myself something to eat in a cafe. See, code cracked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From there, I furthered my learning by\ninvesting in the Michel Thomas method. This was a guide of 6 CDs, with a real\nDutch woman and two complete novices. I digested these CDs on my way to and\nfrom work every day. I think a good indication of knowing how well you\u2019re\ngrasping a language comes from how awful the beginners remain. Or rather, I\nshould say, how little they progress. I always felt oddly proud when I\noutsmarted the man or woman who was still tripping over the basics, even though\nI wasn\u2019t much further myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that point, I decided to take the plunge\ninto full on Dutch immersion -or at least my version of it- and I started\nsearching for podcasts and YouTube videos. Here I came across gems such as Echt Gebeurt, <\/em>a podcast of stories that really happened, <\/em>told by normal, every\nday Jan\u2019s and Femke\u2019s, as well as YouTube vloggers Vera Camilla, Beauty Gloss, Diesna Loomans and Dit Gebeurt Als. <\/em>Quite frankly, I didn\u2019t understand a jot of what they were\nsaying, and I began to feel disheartened. Unaware of how far I\u2019d actually come,\nI felt like I wasn\u2019t progressing, or even worse, receeding, which was bonkers. We\u2019re\nlike that, aren\u2019t we, many of us. We find and nurture our own drawbacks instead\nof celebrating our victories. In any case, I maintained some motivation amongst\nthe self-deprication, and wandered through the abyss of the language that eventually\nbegan to become more and more familiar to me by the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My final step was full immersion. By the end of\nDecember 2017, I headed to the Netherlands armed with a messily packaged bundle\nof words and badly structured sentences inside my head. It still took me a\nnumber of months to start speaking to people solely in Dutch, though. I lacked\nconfidence, and the constant barrage of vocabulary was a lot for my brain. I\ntired easily (or is that just adulthood?), and would often leave social\nsituations earlier than everyone else (oh, it is just adulthood). Sometimes to\nshed a few tears in the bathroom because I really didn\u2019t understand anyone and\nI didn\u2019t fit in. Other times to fall asleep immediately in a\nforeign-word-induced-coma. Immersing yourself in someone elses language is not\neasy. But it does get easier. Slowly. So very slowly. But so very surely. I\nhave a great support system of people around me, who push me out of my comfort\nzone to better me. People who constantly remind me that it\u2019s ok to mess up a\nsentence, because people still understand you anyway. People who want me to master\ntheir language one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Freeze frame on today. It\u2019s February, and I\u2019ve\nlived here now for one year and one month. I have Dutch lessons three days a\nweek, where I confidently converse with people in the same boat. I have a job\nin a real Dutch school, where I have to talk to real life teenagers. I can get\nmyself to the city without any tears being shed. I can answer strangers on the\nstreet when they throw questions that I\u2019m completely unprepared for my way. I\ncan spend a little longer at parties. I\u2019ve even started replacing English words\nwith Dutch ones when I do get to speak English. It\u2019s getting easier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The faster the better\u2026 because then I can start\nall over again with Frisian\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nether-netherland.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/phrasebook.jpg\")
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