Is Dutch EASY to learn?

Is Dutch easy to learn?
Is Dutch an easy language?
Is Dutch similar to English?
Is Dutch a logical language?
Is Dutch a direct language?

These questions we asked to foreigners/expats in the Netherlands.

More #dutchculture videos in the following playlist:

Video produced by:
Bart de Pau
(online Dutch teacher and founder of the Dutch Summer School)

Editing: Nicolas Balbontin, Claudia Macchiavelli
Music used under license: DREAMNOTEMUSIC, EVA_KISSMUSIC

Video was recorded at the BLC Dutch Summer School in Amsterdam

To know more about our:

[MrStef]

Meanwhile most of the dutch people: "Our language is so difficult, I can't speak it myself"....

[nados]

Fun fact: Dutch is the hardest language for Dutch people.

[lynde-htkh]

'Het is een gestructueerde en goed geregelde taal'

Mijn Nederlands lerares op de eerste dag: Nederlands is een moeilijke taal door de vele uitzonderingen. Ik raad jullie aan goed te leren.

[KorehannahBuitenlander]

Being a Korean native speaker, Dutch sounds like an alien language... Pronunciations and grammars do not make sense to me at all. I took the same beginner course& intermediate course two times and still ‘ik ben in de war!’ 😂😂😂 Learning Dutch will be my lifelong challenge. Those people who said “learning Dutch is easy”... I hate you and I’m so jealous of you😂😂😂

[SIG]

For the Danish girl: Dutch and Danish are much closer then you realize, that's why your English sounds so much like a Dutch person speaking English. Same counts for Norwegian and German.

[MJ-rvri]

As someone who speaks 5 languages at at least B1 level, I can say that Dutch is definitely not on the hard side. T/d/dt endings have consistent rules and so does the sentence order (although this can be tricky). Dutch doesn't have cases (naamvallen), plural verbs are all conjugated the same way, pronunciation is straight-forward (though takes time getting used to), a lot of words are cognates to English or German words. It's basically German on easy mode. Compare it to Arabic, Russian, Polish, Mandarin, Hungarian and you'll start to realize that a lot of other languages are harder

[positivenergylife]

I’m a linguist and I can say that Dutch is easy is you start to learn it from the basics, later is like a tree :) you learn new words and you start to speak

[radiomanjk]

There is alot of things you can claim about the dutch language, but you can't say it's a logical language. As a native dutch speaking person but also thinking logical all the time, I don't have much problems with understanding dutch. I can even work with all the exceptions in the language. But in all my life I was never able to comprehend exceptions to exceptions or exceptions to exceptions exceptions, and if I hear people saying the dutch language is logical I think I must have learned it completely wrong and should get this course myself. I for once want to grasp my own language and see it as a logical language, more than anything in the world, but I don't really think that's possible after almost 50 years.

[ndjubilant]

I am so excited that I ran into two men, tourists, visiting my city, Ottawa, Canada. They were visiting from the Netherlands. I practiced my Dutch.

[Xralfixx]

Never thought about the politeness when it comes to our language and others 😂but its true

[kleinespin]

There are a bunch of salty people in the comment section already. Why? These foreigners might just be comparing their experience learning Dutch to their experiences with other languages. The "difficulty if a language is very subjective; it depends on the mother tongue and the other languages a person speaks.

For example: my mother tounge is English and my second is German. Dutch was easier to pick up for me than Spanish, simply because of the similarities it shares with English and German.

[PaulRietvoorn]

THANK YOU FOR THIS. In the Netherlands, about everyone believes in the myth that Dutch is one of the hardest languages in the world. As a Dutch person, this annoys me every time I hear it. Most of the arguments why Dutch would be a hard language make no sense at all because most other languages have these same difficulties as well, like de/het and irregular verbs. The only fair point I've heard is the many idioms Dutch has. It's good to hear these expats confirm that Dutch is indeed a rather easy language and if there are exceptions those still have structured rules and are not completely random.

[helmsylvanian]

Indonesian, speaks both Indonesian and English, learning Dutch, oh boy! Thank you Bart De Pau en Duolingo!

[YourFellowRNRSisterFan]

Ik ben een Amerikaan die Nederlands spreekt, (niet erg goed in persoon) maar ik vind dat als je het leert en echt oefent, het een van de gemakkelijkste talen is om te leren. dat is mijn mening, mijn grootmoeder was Nederlands en ze had een mooi accent tot aan haar dood toen ik 16 was. Ik ben nu 21 en ik mis oma veel en ik heb opa nodig omdat hij stierf toen mijn moeder 10 was. dus ik denk als je echt oefent met een beetje vrije tijd en een digitale vertaler of zelfs Rosetta Stone (als je geen Nederlands familielid hebt wat ik deed), dan kun je het echt krijgen.


That’s Dutch for.-I am an American who speaks Dutch, (not very good in person) but I find if you learn it and really practice it is one of the easiest languages to learn. that’s my opinion, my grandmother was Dutch and she had a beautiful accent right up until she died when I was 16 I am now 21 and I miss Grandma a lot and I need met Grandpa because he died when my mother was 10. so I think if you really practice with a little free time and either a digital translator or even Rosetta Stone (if you do not have a Dutch relative which I did) then you can really get it.

[jdproctor]

I speak 3 different languages and am currently learning Dutch. As a Native English speaker, Dutch was by far the easiest language for me to pick up due to surprisingly many similarities. Especially in contrast to the other 2 languages I learned (Filipino and Gaelic).

[georgestannard]

Yes, in so much as the language itself isn't too difficult to learn, no, in so much as when you visit the Netherlands, they all speak perfect English anyway, and when they hear your English accent they automatically revert to English so you can't practice your Dutch!

[prestokrs]

I've never heard anyone saying Dutch was an impossible language😂

[DezRosswess]

it's not just about learning the words, grammar and so on you have to be strong with the dutch at times, and tell them is no need to speak english back for an easy question or something like ordering a drink at a kiosk. I've done job interviews for technical work without a problem yet I still come across that at times.

[Annatho-]

My friend on ps4 is Dutch and he's been teaching me alot 😄 im getting used to it alot

[cristina_garcia]

I agree with the boy who says that Dutch is much easier than Spanish. As a native Spanish speaker, I understand him. Germanic languages as Dutch, English, Swedish, etc, don't have such a difficult grammar as romance languages which come from Latin. In Spanish, we have six forms in each tense of a verb. Each person has a unique ending in verbs, and six ones in all tenses. We also have two genders in nouns, masculine and feminine in singular and plural, and everything is in concordance with them. In Dutch, plural nouns are "de" words. It is much easier. And there are only two forms of verbs, one for singular and another for plural. Furthermore, we have subjunctive tenses, and you have to memorize which clauses they're used in. Another example of Spanish is that we don't have many structures with "to + infinite " . We usually make a subordinated sentence with a conjugated verb. And there's much more to say... You can't complain about Dutch. I started learning it two months ago and I did a level test two weeks ago. I'm almost in level A1. I'm studying to become a teacher of "Spanish as a second language" and I'll do my best to make it easier for foreigners to learn it. If I can, I'll try to make them have fun with me as Bart de Pau does. 😊😉