Do you want me to write about something specific?

Hello!
I just came up with an idea...

Since I don't write too often and I really would like to, I decided that I could ask YOU guys about some ideas for posts.

If you want me to write about something specific (that has to do with learning languages), just write your idea in the comment section or hit me up through my mail: leszektrybala@gmail.com

I'll try to do the best I can and write post according to your proposition (I can't promise that I will be knowledgeable about certain topics).

I think that this way this blog would be more enjoyed by people, since I would write about topics that are relevant to you all. I hope that you'll give me something to write about :)

Thanks!

Dutch: My impression after 19 days of studying + USEFUL LINKS

Hoi!
As I promised, here is a post about my impression about Dutch after some time that I spend studying it.  At the end of the post I will also share links to some sites that I found useful :)

Generally, Dutch is average when it comes to difficulty. The grammar is relatively easy (For someone who speaks English, Swedish, Norwegian* and German) but I have already encountered some harder concepts while skimming through a grammar book. Namely: demonstrative pronouns (Two for "this" and two for "that" depending on the gender of the word and if I am not mistaken two for plural), word order (My knowledge of German does not make it easier, but I like it, since I treat it like a puzzle) and there probably are other weird things to be learned.

The worst part of Dutch is pronunciation. I am able to pronounce all the sounds of Dutch quite correctly, but because Dutch has many dialects, I still don't know what are the phonological "properties" of a standard dialect (If such exists) and because of that I don't know how to pronounce my R's (No idea, I keep switching between "rolled-only" and "French guttural plus American before a consonant*").

Spelling isn't so difficult nor is the basic comprehension (French seemed harder) and my overall progress in the language is quick. I can already form sentences and I would be able to record a short video, if I only knew the correct pronunciation and the flow of the language (Some words are like painful throat-twisters...they are fun to pronounce though).

Dutch is fun! Finally, I feel like I'm progressing and getting more fluent with every hour, so that's amazing. I will keep it up until 7th of February (Officially) and then we'll see. Maybe I'll just drop grammar books and continue learning only by practicing the language).

Now, here are the resources I'm using:

Duolingo
Memrise:
- Basic Dutch I
- Dutch -  The 1,001 Most Common Words
- 100 Essential Dutch Words
- Hacking Dutch
DutchGrammar

Thanks for reading and good luck with your language studies. I'll try to update it once more before the whole challenge ends.

Doei!

*I can read Norwegian well, and I speak it a little but I have a heavy Swedish accent and I sometimes use Swedish words when I speak it

*I prefer that one more, because I like American R's in Dutch...sounds cool!

My first 30 Day Challenge - Dutch in 30 Days?

One of my new year's resolutions was to watch at least 1 TED talk/day. I personally find these talks inspiring and they make me want to kick some butt (not literally). One talk that I watched and that made me most inspired was a talk by Matt Cuttis "Try something new for 30 days". Matt had me since the first few seconds of the talk and after watching it, very energized and motivated, I decided to come back to challenges (which I stopped doing few months ago) and get to work. Since that day (7th of January), I decided that I will do some challenge every month (not necessarily language related) to learn more things and maybe introduce some new habits in my life.

First one challenge had to be language related though...and I started to learn Dutch straight after watching the ?? (Any synonyms for "talk"?)

My goal is to get conversational in Dutch in 30 days! I already know German, so I am confident that I will succed (I'm 3 days in and I already made some nice progress :P). I will be using Duolingo (already 14 skills in), Memrise (mostly first few thousand words) and some other internet courses (I'll write a post with useful resources soon). My plan is to study at least 30 minutes daily (of course I can do more, and I probably will most of the time) and we'll see where I'll get by the end of the month.

To make it more interesting, I will be posting some updates to make this whole thing more official :)

Wish me luck and wait for a next post where I will write about my initial thoughts about the language and some more specific resources that I will use :)

Doei!