How long would it take me to learn french and dutch living in Belgium?
I am a Spanish speaker. I came to the US without knowing a word of English, but it took me 6 months to speak it and a year to be able to take regular classes in collage with other Americans...
Languages - 4 Answers
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1 :
you leartn fast, you'll have no problem for French, or Dutch, probably 6 months each
2 :
If you know Spanish, you'll easily be able to pick up French because Spanish and French share a lot of grammar rules and a lot of words that mean the same thing in Spanish and French are similar (such as "verde" and "vert".) But I do have to warn you that pronouncing French can be really confusing when you start learning it. I don't know about Dutch, but if you learned English in 6 months, it shouldn't take too long.
3 :
It might take a little longer for both languages but it will still go quite fast)watch out for pronounciations, they are hard in both languages!)
4 :
I'm going to answer from the perspective of a student. It doesn't sound like you're looking to go this deep into the languages, but just in case, I'm going to go a bit in-depth just to cover all angles. Particularly since if you wanted to attend some college in Belgium (they refer to it as university; college is like high school for them) you may be required to learn the language, and the standard requirement seems to be 5 levels. That's a lot of work. Some things are offered in English, but only a few at select schools. If you're looking for a Master degree, though, that's less likely to be a problem, ironically. Quite a few of those are offered in English, and that would give you plenty of time to learn Dutch and/or French. I'm taking a Dutch course in Leuven, an intensive one that's much faster than the norm. It takes about a year or maybe 3/4 of a year for the full course to finish because of the vacation time in between, usually about two weeks, but with a two-month break in the summer. You could take both French and Dutch at college at the same time, although that's a recipe for some serious headaches and a lot of self-study. If you want to really thoroughly learn the languages, like so that you're near-perfect for every normal conversation you'll have, to the point where you'll impress people with how good your grasp of their tongue is and you'll be able to understand news broadcasts and stuff, then you'll want to take niveaus 1 through 5 at least. If you study on your own first you can go faster by taking a test to see what level they'll place you at, but to be perfectly honest, that's an invitation to make many mistakes that will then be harder to correct (people in Belgium use many different dialects by region, so you may learn phrases, expressions, and words that don't exist in the languages proper {both French and Dutch}). You may end up in a high-level course and then have to take it twice or even three times just to pick up on all the rules and weird expressions you didn't learn the first time. But of course, for everyday speaking that's not necessary. Let me warn you that those who are non-native English speakers (from multiple countries and languages of origin) have been saying that Dutch is a LOT harder than English to learn. Not harder than German, definitely not, but still quite tricky. I've seen some very bright students drop out in the first few weeks of the second level. Even a person with a sharp, quick brain can end up struggling. Dutch has a lot more words with multiple meanings than English, the prepositions (and other words) are in some cases the same but used differently which gets quite confusing, and a lot of the language is based on words which get split up and moved to different parts of the sentence. There are also four past tense forms of those splittable words. Like for instance, aanemen becomes nam aan for imperfect singular, namen aan for imperfect plural, and aangenomen for perfect. 80% of words take hebben, but the rest take zijn, and it's not immediately apparent which. There's not precisely a logic for it either. The language has male, female, and non-gendered words; I don't know if that would make more sense to a Spanish speaker. For me it's a bit frustrating, but not unmanageable. Knowing English can trip you up in places, but it can also make other things easier. Just one quick example of Dutch compared to English... "Ik heb zin in (something)" means literally "I have sense in," and figuratively you would end that sentence with coffee, or a short break, or something else you would enjoy having at this moment. Zin also, however, means a sentence. A lot of Dutch is the same words relying on context alone to make sense. The nice and simultaneously frustrating thing is, Flemish people really try to speak to you in your language to make you feel at home. If you struggle with Dutch, they will try to identify your accent. If they know only twenty words of your language, they will valiantly struggle with those twenty words and try the best that they can to communicate. Otherwise, they may default to English. That makes it harder to practice, so you've got to be committed enough to politely refuse to speak English, or linger especially in conversation with those who don't know English at all. But don't let me scare you off with this--especially if you just want to go to Belgium for a vacation or to live for a while and see how you like the place rather than go for a bachelor psych degree or something (that requires level 5). And if you do want to be a student, the cost of education in Belgium is drastically, drastically better (although, not the prices of clothes and such.) The fact that there are so many English-speakers and English-dabblers in Belgium can also be a tremendous advantage for learning by ear and conversation as you did with English; they can help you a lot by translating what they're saying. If you enjoy a linguistic challenge, Dutch
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