Learning Dutch (For Real, Finally)
August 24, 2022
We are eligible to apply for permanent residency next year, and we’re facing the reality of how slowly our Dutch has progressed in the four years we’ve been living here. People often ask if you need to know Dutch in order to live in the Netherlands. I guess the answer is it depends. It’s certainly possible to live in parts of the Netherlands without speaking Dutch. We’ve lived in Amsterdam for four years now and I just took a placement exam that informed me I’m still testing at level “knows zero Dutch” which is humbling but not terribly surprising, if I’m being honest. I have a million excuses for why my Dutch hasn’t progressed more. People switch to English if you aren’t fluent, my brain is tired and lazy, pandemic isolation…. the reasons are many. Many expats have relocation packages that pay for things like moving expenses and language classes (which are quite expensive, and require you to study, turns out you can’t just sign up for a class and declare your work is done, like how it goes every time I join a gym), but we moved here of our own volition so we’ve been on our own for these expenses. We’ve taken several intro-level Dutch classes that meet once a week and require self-teaching (which I believe we’ve established I am bad at), and done Duolingo, etc. I’ve been learning how to say the boy eats a sandwich for the last four years, but I still got it wrong on the placement exam. What can I say, I’m still a beginner.
But we’re extremely motivated now.
In order to get permanent residency in the Netherlands, you have to have lived in the Netherlands for five years and pass a series of inburgering exams, which include reading, writing, listening and speaking A2-level Dutch as well as knowledge of Dutch society and the labor market. In a surprise twist, the government recently announced that they are increasing the language requirement to B1 very soon. So the clock is ticking. We need to learn this language in order to get permanent residency, and we need permanent residency in order to remain in this country on a visa that is not exclusively tied to James’s current job. We love it here and want to stay so having all our eggs in one basket is too risky, so we need to get permanent residency in order to plan for our lives here. Our glorious, happy, Dutch-speaking lives.
We also want to be able to speak Dutch. You can certainly live as an Expat and not learn Dutch. There are plenty of other expats here you can hang out with, and most Dutch people can speak English. But we didn’t move here to only hang out with other expats, and in our experience, you do need to learn Dutch if you are truly going to be a part of the Dutch community, especially if we ever want to live outside of Amsterdam proper. We’ve socialized with our Dutch neighbors and James’s work colleagues and it usually follows the same pattern — at first everyone will speak English, but as soon as we leave the circle or if groups are speaking to each other, they switch to Dutch. It’s very clear the only reason anyone is speaking English is for us.
Last weekend we went to a cocktail party that our Dutch neighbors hosted. We were the only Americans, and over the course of the evening I had wonderful, deep conversations about politics, Formula 1, biking, travel, sexism, the pandemic, education, and parenting. But in every conversation the person I was speaking with switched to English for me. I was centered in my own language, making it all about me. This gets old, for them and for us.
Here’s another example. A few months ago my doorbell rang and a tiny Dutch child was standing there crying. I recognized her, she’s the daughter of one of our neighbors, I’d seen her many times on our street but we’d never spoken. She was standing on my doorstep crying, clearly distressed. I tried to understand what was happening, and was able to determine she was alone, her parents weren’t home, but that’s as far as I got. I got out my phone and used it to do some basic translation and figured out she’d been at a skatepark with her sister, who had fallen and been injured, and in the commotion she ran home to get help but no one was home. I couldn’t figure out if her sister had gotten help yet, if she’d been separated from her parents at the scene or if they were at work, if I needed to call a doctor, or if I just needed to track down her parents. This was all happening in real time with a crying child, a known injury, and my pathetic Dutch language skills. This tiny crying child was able to speak more English than I was able to speak Dutch. She asked me to phone her mother, and thank god she actually knew the phone number, which is saying something, who knows phone numbers these days. I called her mom who answered and switched to English and said she was at the skate park with her injured daughter, they were all looking for the little one who was with me, and to please stay with her until she got home. I spent the next half hour sitting on the doorstep pulling up funny animal TikToks to pass the time until her mom got home. Side note, her mom arrived on her bicycle with her injured daughter riding on the handlebars. She’d already called the house doctor who was going to meet them at the house. I love this country so much it hurts. It almost makes me cry thinking about this little girl, my neighbor, who desperately needed my help and I barely had the vocabulary to assist her. Scratch that, I am crying.
So this brings me to now, and my renewed vigor and motivation to learn Dutch. Next month I’ll be attending a fully immersive 10-day Dutch language program. I couldn’t decide between this program and a language class at the University of Amsterdam that meets five days a week and requires nine hours of Dutch work per day, but after hemming and hawing I went for the fully immersive program. I chose it because I know how hard it has been for me to learn this language, not only because it’s a difficult language to learn, Anderhalvemetersamenleving is a real, actual Dutch word (it means keep 1.5 meters apart, which we had to learn at the beginning of the pandemic), but also because I am a quitter. More so now than ever. I fear that week two of cycling through the rain to sit in a classroom for five hours followed by four hours of homework will end with me in my bed, having flushed 800 euros down the toilet and being nowhere closer to learning Dutch.
So, wish me luck goddamnit, I’m going to need it.
xoxo
