Dutch Class

There’s good news for students of Dutch language who do not have access to Dutch television. The Dutch evening new programme NOS Journaal is now available as a podcast.

Obviously it’s a great advantage to be able to watch and listen to “real life” (as opposed to purely “teaching materials”) Dutch media. The facility to download and view NOS Journaal as a video podcast makes this Dutch news programme available to all users of iTunes (though a PC or MAC computer). If you are lucky enough to have a video iPod or an iPhone it may be even more convenient to watch NOS Journaal while out and about, travelling, in cafes, or wherever you go.

To subscribe to the NOS Journaal video podcast open iTunes and goto the iTunes store to browse podcasts. NOS Journaal is free to subscribe to and very easy to find. I used the search term “NOS Journaal”. You might also want to browse other Dutch language podcasts (by specifying the language as “Dutch”).

Inspired by the earlier entry on DutchClass.co.uk featuring “YouTube as a Dutch Learning Aid ?”, I’ve been back to YouTube in search of more (slightly more advanced!) entries to follow that introduction.

After trying the obvious search terms, such as “learn Dutch”, “Dutch language”, “teach Dutch” etc. without finding anything outstanding, it was time to get a bit frivolous! I was surprised to find that “Dutch cartoons” generated a list of Danish cartoons. Eventually persistence paid off. If you’re willing to dig them out YouTube will reward you with a fair few fun kids’ cartoons in Dutch.

This one seems especially cheerful:

As a beginner learning Dutch I’ll have to watch it a few more times to catch all the words. They are pronounced clearly so that shouldn’t be too difficult.

There are many more similar cartoons linked to this one. (If you play this cartoon and watch it to the end, a menu including more cartoons in Dutch follows.)

I just tried typing “learn Dutch” and “learning Dutch” as search terms in YouTube. Some of the results are a bit mischievous and they occasionally tend to misrepresent the words they are teaching you to say…

The two girls in this video seem pretty straightforward though. Also the video ends by showing a pair of painted clogs. What more (other than a windmill) could you ask for?

In this first post I would like to attend the Dutch learners to a recent gem of Dutch TV. You will be able to find it quite easily by searching for “vegan streaker” on YouTube. One example can be found here.

Have a look. See if you can figure out what is going on in this very Dutch tableau.

To help you along the gentleman in the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt who is presenting the show is Paul de Leeuw, the Dutch equivalent of Graham Norton in so far as there is such a thing. The skinnier and skimpily dressed gentleman who, without invitation, runs on stage advertises himself as the Vegan Streaker except of course he isn’t streaking and Paul de Leeuw isn’t having it…