The Perfect Storm?

[kelly_in_taiwan]

Sorry for the lack of updates but I was offline (voluntarily) for most of yesterday. We had a pretty brutal storm out here. Tonnes of rain, lightning and very very windy...how it didn't qualify as a typhoon, I don't know. :S

Comments

Did you get my e-mail?

[domixt]

I sent it to darkpixie account.

Dom

Re: Did you get my e-mail?

[kelly_in_taiwan]

I've just sent my reply. Sorry for the delay. :(

[silentreverie]

That's always the problem with languages, isn't it? I can't make up my mind whether it's better to just know a few quite well, or know many a little bit. And everytime I tell myself I really should just focus on one language for now, some other unbelievable fascinating language will pop up and make me want to study that one too. :)

What's it like to learn Dutch? I've always imagined it can't be that difficult, especially for English speakers as the languages are quite closely related, but I do wonder. What aspects are difficult to learn, which ones are easy?

[kelly_in_taiwan]

Dutch isn't the hardest language in the world and you're right about the similarities with English. Quite a lot of vocabulary is shared by the two and knowledge of English and even French can really help you build up your active vocab. I think the hardest aspects are probably the verbs (I really hate conjugating verbs in any language!) and the word order. I still keep falling into the trap of creating Dutch sentences with an English word order but I'm slowly getting past this obstacle with plenty of practice...thankfully my partner is very patient. :)

As for knowing languages, I think most people would settle for very good knowledge of a few while others prefer knowing the basics of a wider range of languages. I think I fall into the latter category as my interests keep varying and I lack the motivation to get really far with languages if I keep hitting obstacles. I've lost track of how many languages I've given up on for one reason or another. ^_^

[characterguy]

And, of course, I bought a few more books for my ever-growing collection. I really don't want to think how the heck I'll be getting everything back to Europe...

I don't want to even THINK about how much money I spent shipping books back to the US from China!

[kelly_in_taiwan]

I think my bill's going to run into the triple digits at the rate I'm buying books! I'm going to try and lighten the load by taking a few books back with me when I go home next week.