Here’s a slightly more academic look at recognising a page of text as Dutch, as opposed to say German. It is presented by American academic Prof. Alexander Arguelles. After watching the following clip and also visiting Prof. Arguelles’ page on YouTube I’ll certainly be watching more of his material.

The above is extremely simple. It just compares Dutch with English and German, and refers to other Germanic languages only collectively – without actually naming any others. However this clip is part of a series and, being an early “episode”, there must be a good chance that future entries about recognising other languages will include comparisons with Dutch.

If you found this as interesting as I did you might also want to visit Prof. Arguelles’s page on YouTube to read more about his approach thoughts on learning teaching and learning languages.

At just over 9.5 minutes, this is quite a long YouTube clip but well worth the patience if you’re considering a trip to Holland and not sure what to expect. The travel-brochure style photos are great, especially set to the rather catchy tune with Dutch lyrics.

This presents Holland with pride, omitting to mention some its more modern yet less stylish associations. There are plenty of other YouTube clips about “coffee shops”, questionnable areas of Amsterdam, and so on! Watch this for the clogs, windmills, national costumes, coastline, canals, tulips, and many other features of Dutch life.

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.)

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?

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…