![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday Lunchtime - past halfway!
Mar. 8th, 2006 01:05 pmA happy time, I think you will agree, mainly because I’ve only got 55 hours left (give or take) before I’m on a plane to blighty, and the a whole week off. To say that I am looking forward to it is something of an understatement! Lots to get sorted out here at work before I escape (naturally), but at the same time, I am confident that no-one is going to spontaneously combust because I don’t get some work completed…!
Carole is off to her Dutch lesson tonight, so I’m going to have to be at home; now that the BNW stuff is done, I’m going to try & drive on with the Dutch, as my experience to date has been that I can read it relatively well, but speaking or listening…? Forget it. My vocabulary doesn’t seem to work in ‘real time’, so when someone talks to me, my mind goes blank!
I’ve been working on this by trying to make Dutch more ‘alive’ for me by reading Tintin books (in Dutch); I know the stories well enough and can follow whats happening, so I’m hoping that it’ll drill the vocabulary into me. My hope is that I can grow my passive knowledge enough, I can follow conversations more easily (though I suspect I’ll end up confusing the locals by saying things like ‘ten thousand thundering typhoons!’ at inappropriate times).
Also, I’m having problems in getting people to speak to me in Dutch, they can tell that I’m a foreigner and drop into English. Its depressing when 5 year old children speak to you in fluent English when they try to sell you cookies…
S
Carole is off to her Dutch lesson tonight, so I’m going to have to be at home; now that the BNW stuff is done, I’m going to try & drive on with the Dutch, as my experience to date has been that I can read it relatively well, but speaking or listening…? Forget it. My vocabulary doesn’t seem to work in ‘real time’, so when someone talks to me, my mind goes blank!
I’ve been working on this by trying to make Dutch more ‘alive’ for me by reading Tintin books (in Dutch); I know the stories well enough and can follow whats happening, so I’m hoping that it’ll drill the vocabulary into me. My hope is that I can grow my passive knowledge enough, I can follow conversations more easily (though I suspect I’ll end up confusing the locals by saying things like ‘ten thousand thundering typhoons!’ at inappropriate times).
Also, I’m having problems in getting people to speak to me in Dutch, they can tell that I’m a foreigner and drop into English. Its depressing when 5 year old children speak to you in fluent English when they try to sell you cookies…
S
