Lesson 1: Made in Holland
Welkom
Welkom! or, Welcome to this online Dutch course. We hope you
will enjoy it! The idea behind this course to learn basic Dutch
in a friendly community setting where you can make your interactive
exercises and also contact other students by means of the forum,
the chatbox or exchanging messages.
The course consists
of 25 lessons (click on the numbers above). Each lesson contains a small
text explaining some Dutch grammar. It is accompanied by interactive
exercises to train what you have just learned. For the interactive part you
get scores. When you scored high enough, you proceed with the next
lesson.
To get acquainted with the exercises, click on the button
'Exercises' at the top of this page. If you click there,
the first test exercise will appear. Of course, in the lessons
to come the exercises will be more difficult ;) Good luck!
I have tried my utmost to write these Dutch lessons for you.
Unfortunatly however, I know that my Dutch is much better than
my English. So, if you have any comments on my English, feel
free to contact me!!
The costs
The first five lessons are free of charge. Give it a try and
see if you like it. If you don't like the course, there are no strings attached.
If you did like the free lessons, you can buy more lessons for
€ 1,25 euro per lesson. You are free to choose how many lessons you
want to buy. IDEAL and PAYPAL payments are accepted.
Pronunciation reference
In this course we focus on Dutch grammar and vocabulary for reading and writing. However, some attention will be paid to the pronuncation. In this pronunciation reference, you will find the basic rules.
Consonants
The pronunciation of the Dutch consonants
b,
c,
d,
f,
h,
k,
l,
m,
n,
p,
q,
s,
v,
w,
x and
z is comparable to the English pronunciation. The consonant combinations
nk and
ng also appear in Dutch and are pronounced as in English.
The other consonants need some further explanation:
- j is pronouced as the y in you, and not as the j in jack!
- the r before a vowel is pronounced as in the Spanish perro
- the r after a vowel is pronounced as the English r, like in door
- g is quite hard to pronounce. It is pronounced as the g in the Spanish gente
or the ch in the german dich
- the consonant combination ch is pronounced as the g discussed above
- the consonant combination sch is pronounced by a s, followed by a ch as discussed above
- the t as the english t, but pronounced as ts when a word ends with -tie
Vowels: short and long variant
The five basic vowels in Dutch are
a,
e,
i,
o and
u. Each of these vowels has a short and a long variant. When to use which variant will be discussed later on. Here is the overview of these vowels:
| vowels: short and long variants |
| a | english dark | aa | english a but mouth more open |
| e | english bread | ee | english flame |
| i | english inch | ie | english feed |
| o | english awful | oo | english oak |
| u | english bird | uu | german ü or french u
try to say the ie and round your lips |
In addition to these vowels, there are the following combined vowels, pronounced as follows:
- ei as in the english mayor or why
- ij exactly the same as ei
- eu as in the french peu, or deux
- oe as in the english food
- ou as in the english house
- au exactly the same as ou
- ui try going from ou to eu. It's in between. Or, say an e followed by uu
- y as in english baby
