Back to School

Three weeks ago I started an intensive Dutch course. Six hours a week class contact time plus half as much homework. My weekday evenings are no longer my own. Two evenings a week I have to leave work at five sharp, rush home – throw some leftovers or a ready meal into the microwave, gulp it down and be out the door by 6.10. It doesn’t leave much room for digestion – or a glass of wine. I’m learning to compensate by starting work later (or doing the easier work in my portfolio) on those days – so I have some functioning brain cells left for the evening. More worryingly – although this is for the future - this course severely diminishes my capacity to plan holidays around my unpredictable work schedule – and to avoid peak holiday seasons. Still the compensation is that (the recently collapsed) Dutch government (possibly more on this topic later) is paying for it – in an attempt to promote integration and participation. That means the course has a large, although often implicit, element of ‘civic training’.

As a native English speaker it is often difficult to find the motivation to learn Dutch. Firstly, nearly everyone in the NL speaks really good English and wants to use it. Often when I order a pancake, apple tart or pound of cheese the waiter/ress or shop assistant will reply in English, keen to get a chance to practice their language skills. I usually manage to do my daily errands in Dutch. Last week I even arranged to visit a stranger in a neighbouring town to buy a piece of second hand electrical kit from them – all through Dutch language e-mails and phone calls. I was quite proud. Basic information I can process and communicate, but I don’t get subtleties, not can I convey them and that is where the steep learning curve begins. (When it comes to really important stuff like contracts and insurance documents I get a native speaker to check them for me – and they say - perhaps to make me feel better- that many Dutch people would have trouble reading the terminology).

So it’s the middle ground that gets me. Ninety per cent of my Dutch associates speak far better English than I do. So it is natural that we talk in English. The biggest difficulties emerge in group situations. There always comes a point (at a ratio of about 3 or 4 to 1) when the conversation drifts back to Dutch. Though I can often follow what is going I am usually about two sentences behind, have missed a few details or lack the conversational gambits to participate in the conversation. This reinforces my natural shyness and makes me feel stupid or inadequate. It’s always a dilemma whether to smile and occasionally add a non-committal comment like ‘lekker’ or ‘echte’ or ‘geweldig’ or to try to gently push the conversation back to English. If I do that I feel I am not respecting the language of my host country and am ‘perpetuating the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon speaking world’. But as the evening wears on I become more distanced from the drift of the conversation. Sometimes I avoid going to primarily Dutch language social gatherings–because I know there is going to come a point in the evening where my eyes glaze over and my brain goes dead. So it’s important to learn Dutch to participate more here, though it worries me that I will never master the language.

More thoughts to follow on this topic– but it’s now 16.50 and my microwave meal beckons. (The thoughts of others in a similar situation are most welcome)