Posted by Yesterday, I hit 1,000 days of Dutch, which was like whoah impressive for a minute then I forgot all about it, until my family surprised me with Duolingo balloons and said it was an achievement.
Writing this today, and thinking of a blog title I wanted to call it een duizend dagen, because in English that’s what I would say, a thousand, but it’s just thousand in Dutch, pronounced douzand, and that illustrates all the reasons I love learning Dutch. It’s like English but not at all. Each word gives me a fascinating peek into our shared linguistic history. On top of which, the Duolingo app gets me to experience and observe in action, everyday, all the human-computer interaction aspects which I love.
Eerste 1000 dagen
I put een duizen dagen into the search engine anyway, and it came back with eerste 1000 dagen, which apparently refers to the first thousand days of a baby’s life in the Nederlands: two years and 270 days. Mmm, those toddlers will be speaking way better Dutch than me, since they are doing an intensive course!
However, my achievement is pretty cool: 1,000 days is two years and 270 days of showing up, every single day, without fail. Like I said, back in February 2025 when I hit 500 days and then thought about it for another 25 before writing a blog: Duolingo Dutch: Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands, I am endlessly charmed and fascinated by this language that I have absolutely no need to learn – 475 days later, I feel exactly the same way.
I love going on holiday to the Netherlands and Belgium (België – prounounced Belgeea with a hard ‘g’) too, they have chips (frietjes) and tasty beer (lekker bier), my favourites are in order: 1) Maredsous, and 2) Grimbergen; both Belgian beers; amazing history and really interesting architecture.
Invariably everyone, like any country in Europe, will switch to English when I try to speak Dutch. I used to get annoyed especially in French since I am fluent, but nowadays don’t much care, I see it is as much fun for people to practice their English as it is for me to practice Dutch, or French, or my dodgy Italian.
Last year on holiday in the north of Holland when I ordered lunch in Dutch (well Nederengels or Dunglish) I said I was learning Dutch so the lovely waiter was not only super patient but then two minutes came back with some picture books that they keep for children. They kept me well occupied!
I read Het lelijke eendje which is the Ugly Duckling – eende is duck the Dutch put je at the end a lot from cups (koptje) to kids (kindje). Leljke means ugly which is similarly-different sort of like an opposite to lekker which means tasty.
This happens a lot in Dutch (vriend – friend and vrijend – enemy). Eet smakelijk means enjoy your meal, which is a bit like the tasty lekker and kind of smack your chops again, different but similar enough. It is how I would describe the concept idea which AI uses to mathematically map words, words which mean similar things but are different (shaame – shame and schult – fault) but live in the same ‘neighbourhood’ as it were, or they do in my mind.
I didn’t understand what Doornroosje meant until I started reading that it was her birthday (verjaardag or geboortedag) and she got a caedeauje and I was like: Ooooh! As cadeau is French for gift and I then guessed that Doornroosje was Sleeping Beauty, aka Briar Rose, or literally in Dutch Thorn Rosie. I mean some of this might be wrong as I have learnt Dutch purely from Duolingo which is pretty cool I have yet to pick up a book. Muur is wall which is the same as the French mur and it made me realise that Dutch has absorbed many French words too like English. Because kamer is room like the German kamer. Room in Dutch means cream.
Je ne parle pas le décimal dewey
I am not a linguist by a long chalk but perhaps I might have been in a parallel life. Sometimes I envy other Europeans as for them it’s more straightforward, they learn English, and speak to each other in English, as a common language but as an Englishwoman I am spoilt for choice.
I learnt French at school, as there was a choice of French or Library studies and I didn’t care too much to become fluent in Dewey Decimal. But aaah how the other half lives, my Southern kids (getting into a bit of North/South divide for a min) got a choice of French, Spanish, Latin, German, Italian, nice!
When I moved to Switzerland, years ago. I signed up for Italian lessons, even though my boss had a benny as he sent me off (cheekily) to sign up to learn French, when he found out about the Italian mid-benny, I told him not to worry, I already had an ‘A’ level in French, but his face went a brighter red than it already was, as he shouted out his opinion- that happened a lot when we interacted. I can’t think why.
Soy parle das esperanto, dank u wel, a toute a l’heure. Ciao!
I love Italian and all the Italian operas. Over the years I have tried to learn Italian several times. One time the hubby and I had them and watched a lot of Il signori delli annelli (‘The Lord of the Rings’) until our Italian teacher begged us to stop. My husband didn’t, he always spoke Lord of the Rings Italian. Apparently jettalo tra la fiamme (‘Cast it into the fire’) is not something one does with pizza, even though my husband asked at a pizzeria in Rome. I am crying-laughing as I type this years later, because the guy’s face was a picture.
I get by in Italian – it takes a couple of days for it come back – and it’s a bit Italglish in parts as some days now as I get older, I can barely remember my own name, let alone a whole language I rarely speak after not quite learning it several times, over 20 years ago.
However, my husband – who is normally quite shy – on the Continent, turns into a flamboyant version of himself speaking an Esperanto-Lord of the Rings mashup with a confidence unparalleled and weirdly people seem to love it and understand him. Well, apart from the pizzeria that time, and the other time in an Italian deli when the server begged him to speak in English, as his order was taking so long and there was a queue around the block. Though when he did, the server didn’t know what aubergine was. I guess he was waiting for the word eggplant. I had to lean over and say melanzane. My husband makes holidays so much more linguistically interesting.
The only language I really speak is French. Six years of living in France and Switzerland, it is solid. I used to write in French – not brilliantly but good enough to be understood, dream in French, speak French daily and so on, and years later it is still good. It takes me a minute to get back into it, but I can watch French films, read French books and so on. Even so when I go on holiday, and even though I speak proper French, some people will insist on speaking to me in English, even if their English is terrible. I don’t mind now. I think: Oh well, we will get there when we get there in this conversation.
A window into the Middeleeuwen
Sometimes, learning Dutch really does feel like looking through a window into the Middeleeuwen (the Middle Ages). I guess before the Norman Conquest and the introduction of French, English probably looked and sounded a lot more like German or Dutch.
Oh, and we had a Dutch king again, with William of Orange in 1688, after the ‘Glorious Revolution’, but he ruled jointly with Queen Mary, who was the heir presumptive anyway. After her death William ruled alone until his death when he was succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne, and when she died they got German George of Hanover, who became George I.
Poor Anne had seventeen pregnancies with 12 miscarriages and then all five of her children died in infancy. Tragic. (I just read all that on Wikipedia, I love Wikipedia and donate to them. I learn stacks off there.) I didn’t realise that William had been married to the British heir to the throne anyway, though they did oust James, Mary’s dad. I guess I wasn’t there that day in ‘A’ level history. Even so, it wasn’t the same as a full on invasion like the Normans, Vikings, Anglo Saxons and the Romans. I remember the houses at school were named after the various peeps.
Okay so here I am now 1,500 words in just warming up to my theme but I already have gone on far too long. So I guess I will just say:
To be continued…
When I began writing this blog, I wanted to talk about how Duolingo has turned learning Dutch into a game for me as 1,000 days is a lot but felt like no effort at all.
I had also planned to talk about gamification and tiny or atomic habits and how I am sucker for those sorts of life hacks (well I read the reviews, reading a whole book about how to make something a tiny habit is hardly productive is it now? Snort!).
Alongside life hacks and gamification, I had on my list app design, user experience (UX), human-computer interaction (HCI) and the behavioural and social psychology of the Duolingo app. And, over the last 1,000 days I have seen in real-time the ‘improvements’ in the AI, I put it in quotation marks as this has been done with wrappers, something I talk about a lot when I am Demystifying AI.
But alas, I didn’t get that far and this is a very long blog (een veel lange blog – actually very can be veel, heel, or zeer I don’t know when or why yet… ooh and verbinding is connect like for-binding your computer to the WWW, that’s how I think of it..) already, and I didn’t even mention my latest favourite words:
- Magnetron (microwave)
- Sneeuw (snow)
- Regenboog (rainbow)
- Geest (ghost
- Ziel (soul)
- Lot (destiny)
To name but a few, as I could go on forever they fascinate me, rather like Burgeroorlog which sounds like a weird McDonald’s pudding rather than its serious meaning of civil war.
Okay! I will stop here and save all my other thoughts for another time and go do Day 1,001 of Dutch on Duolingo so that I can think some more about my favourite things.
Like Arnie: I’ll be back – Ik zal terugkomen.
(Oh my God! I’ve just realized I could start watching my favourite films in Dutch. Not saying Terminator is my favorite film because Sarah Connor is a complete idiot in the ’80s, hampered by a completely weird sexist script. She’s fantastic in 2019. Dark Fate is the best Terminator movie ever it was so good I had to blog about it. Like Linda Hamilton said: What would a 62-year-old Sarah Connor be like now? Epic, That’s what she is!)
Until part two: tot ziens!