Teach Yourself Beginners Dutch - 2 Audio CDs and Book
Brand New: Still shrink wrapped
2 Cds and Book
cover all the basics
go at a steady pace
build your confidence to speak
Teach Yourself Beginner’s Dutch is the right course for you if you really want to learn Dutch but are daunted by the prospect of complicated grammar, classes and coursebooks. This book starts right from the beginning and explains everything in simple English. There are hints throughout to make learning easy and you can learn at your own pace with plenty of practice of each new point. It is a friendly introduction to the language which will help you to understand and speak Dutch sufficiently well to function effectively in basic everyday situations, both social and business. The course will also offer you an insight into Dutch culture.
The book consists of 13 graded units and a special section on pronunciation and spelling. New language is introduced through short dialogues and texts which are also on the accompanying recording. Two accompanying cassettes or CDs are available separately or in a pack with the book.
About the Authors
Gerdi Quist, co-author is a native Dutch speaker, and lecturer at University College, London.
Dennis Strik, co-author, is a part-time lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury and part-time postgraduate language assistant at University College, London.
About the Dutch Language
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, but also by smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other West Germanic languages (e.g., English, West Frisian and German) and somewhat more remotely to the North Germanic languages. Dutch is a descendant of Old Frankish and is the parent language of Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. Standard Dutch (Standaardnederlands) is the standard language of the major Dutch-speaking areas and is regulated by the Nederlandse Taalunie ("Dutch Language Union"). Dutch is also an official language of the European Union and the Union of South American Nations.
Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, but has a less complicated morphology caused by deflexion, which puts it closer to English. Dutch has officially three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, however, according to some interpretations these are reduced to only two, common and neuter, which is similar to the gender systems of most Continental Scandinavian languages.
The consonant system of Dutch did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has more in common with English and the Scandinavian languages. Like most Germanic languages it has a syllable structure that allows fairly complex consonant clusters. Dutch is often noted for the prominent use of velar fricatives (ch and g, pronounced at the back of the mouth), often picked up on as a source of amusement or even satire.
Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, considerably more so than English. This is to a large part due to the heavy influence of Norman French on English, and to Dutch patterns of word formation, such as the tendency to form long and sometimes very complicated compound nouns, being more similar to those of German and the Scandinavian languages. |
