Is Dutch a hard language to learn?

Is Dutch a difficult language? You will certainly have asked yourself this question when you learn Dutch. Read on, because in this article you will learn more about the easy and difficult aspects of Dutch!

Anyone who speaks only Chinese or Arabic will find Dutch extremely difficult. The differences between these languages ​​and Dutch are very large. Dutch is, however, family of, for example, German and English. We call those languages ​​the Germanic languages. If you already speak English, German, Swedish or Afrikaans, you will pick up the grammar, vocabulary and / or pronunciation a lot faster.

There are a few things that make the Dutch language difficult. If you learn Dutch, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. The use of "te", the use of "er", de- and het-woorden and of course the word order, to name a few. The latter in particular is a challenge for many students, because you have to carefully consider the order in which the words must be placed for each sentence. But if you already speak German, the word order is probably a piece of cake!

Do you want to work on word order? Take a look at our online word order video course!

In terms of pronunciation, Dutch is quite tough for some. There are a number of sounds (eu, ui, ij) that cannot be found in many other languages. The difference between "short vowels" (a, o, e, u, i) and "long vowels" (aa, oo, ee, uu, ie) is also important. Of course you do not want to accidentally say a bomb (bom) if you mean a tree (boom) or report that you will have jerks (etters) over for dinner - instead of eters (people coming over for dinner).

There are also many things that do not make Dutch difficult. There are far fewer verb forms than in Spanish, for example. Dutch also has no cases, such as German.

What makes the learning process a lot easier when learning any language is talking to native speakers. Do you want to talk to locals more often? Then also read our blog on talking with locals!