<<The Dutch are such a great bunch of people>>
Luhan:
That's so, so true...they're lovely. It must have been very nice to discover this close affinity in the Netherlands, and a pleasant experience to prove the close links between Afrikaans and Dutch.
I loved my times there and it's great to know it's so close at hand...just a short hop across the North Sea from the UK. I heard one guy say on the radio that it takes much less time to fly from London to Amsterdam than it does to travel by car from one part of London to another, because of the traffic.
I'm very interested in knowing how the Dutch or Flemish react when they hear you speak Afrikaans. I'm not saying the more educated scholarly types but the more down-to-earth people you meet in shops or other places.
Dutch people are different.
Ten years ago I was in Groningen in the North.
Many people dont speak English there, only German.
The girl I liked did not speak English and I was/am married. Such a pity.
And one of my guides was not very good. He said to me in the restaurant - that (another) girl cost about... I was surprised, but maybe he wanted to help me to solve my sexual problems. I was really nervous, but I would not give someone such advice.
Destinie
you may have a look at www.holland.com. it's the official site of the dutch tourism agency. It's in English. There are soms links to other pages. Don't hesitate when you find out it's in Dutch. On the right corner of the page you can switch to the English version. You can also ask questions about the netherlands to the dutch ambassy in the united states. Off course I can tell a lot more about my country, but I don't know what you want to know. Don't hesitate to ask questions on this forum.
grts. Lidewij
Garans
maybe the girl didn't like you. Than it's the easiest way to forget your english.
Lidewij ,
It could be so.
But she baked a very delicious pie for me to taste (there were about 4 women that tried it - just a contest where I was the judge).
This pie was very tender and filled with sweet liquid. I liked it very much.
napoleon called the neitherland...holland so this has certainly promote that name during those years and until now.
They're good at languages 'cos their's is a tiny country and have a positive attitude towardslearning other peoples culture, hence the reason why they know so many languages with ease, or wilth less effort than others.
There's another reason why they are so good at speaking foreign languages, especially English. Most of the movies that you can watch in the Netherlands are foreign (mainly American and English), and you can only watch them in original language with subtitles, they only dub cartoon for kids, in which case there's also always an original version available. This helps the learning tremendously.
The same goes for Belgium, by the way, where the Flemish are also good linguists.
Sergey, they do the same thing here in Bosnia and people usually don't speak English here....LOL, there must be something more than that.
In some other countries, too. Finland, for instance. But I said _another_ reason, not _the_ reason. :)
I think it must be the education system. That's the only way you can learn it that well, unless you live in an English speaking country.
Duch is the closest language to English and they understand a lot of it without translation. The same with German.
It doesn't seem that way to me. I mean, those languages are similar, they belong to the same group, but I don't think they can understand each other without translation.
> I mean, those languages are similar, they belong to the same group, but I don't think they can understand each other without translation.
Of course, the Dutch don't understand English unless they've learnt it. But those languages being similar makes it a whole lot easier for them to study the language.