Dutch For Beginners

Last night, I started the first lesson of Dutch For Beginners. It was not easy. =( I even thought of dropping out in the 1st hour of lesson. It was that tough! No kidding!

Even though we are here for almost a year, we really don't know much Dutch, except the simple greetings like good morning (goedemorgen), good afternoon (goedemiddag), thank you very much (dankuwel), etc. This course is not really about teaching the simple conversational language, it really goes into grammer, vocubulary, pronounication, listening. We learned the sounds of alphabet in Dutch last night and boy, it was so different and tough! But luckily I managed to understand and can pronounce the sounds somewhat correctly.

Then came the listening and trying to repeat after the teacher....heheh...I think I barely repeated it correctly after the teacher and the Dutch that came out of my mouth sounds so weird! =p Actually on hindsight, I should be signed up for the course on Dutch conversational language instead of this! I only want to learn so that I can understand what the shop staff are talking about, etc. Anyway, there's no backing out now cos it's a hefty price to pay (~€350) for 20 lessons (3 hrs each lesson) and a total of ~€130 for books and listening cds. =(

Sigh...I got to look on the positive side of things. There's no exam but there MAY (hope not!) be a test at the end. If I attend 80% of the classes and the teacher feels that I have improved and made the effort to learn, he will give me the certificate. Hopefully I can get that certificate on 1st April 09 which will be the last lesson!

Overall I think I'm going to have a tough time ahead but I think I should have no problem with reading Dutch in the end. It's the pronounciation and listening that I'm worried cos there isn't anyone to practise with. Keep my fingers crossed I don't embarrass myself too much during lessons!

Not really looking forward to next week. =p