About six weeks ago, I moved from Sydney, Australia, to Utrecht in the Netherlands. Naturally, I started to learn Dutch.(*)
This post is mainly a summary of the things I found helpful so far. Apparently, the Netherlands is becoming an increasingly popular expat destination (cough Brexit cough), so this might be useful to some.
I quickly discovered that, even after living in an English-speaking country for many years, as a German native speaker, learning Dutch from the perspective of German is much easier than going via English (although, fluency in English obviously also helps). The first obstacle here is that it is a lot easier to find a good Dutch-English (electronic) dictionary than a Dutch-German one — for instance, my macOS and iOS devices already come with a Dutch-English dictionary that I can hook into the system look-up service with a click (or tap). The best Dutch-German dictionary that I could find so far is uitmuntend — thanks to Chris Eidhof for that very useful recommendation. Its creator also runs the super informative buurtaal forum.
As a starting point, I found the mondly app quite useful. It encourages a daily routine and quickly builds up a basic vocabulary and set of common expressions. It’s not cheap, but light years ahead of other iOS apps I checked out.
The next step for me was to make a habit out of trying to decipher Dutch websites and to refrain from clicking on the English language option. Whether that is the daily whether forecast, a news item, or the instructions for opening a bank account, it is a slow process, but there is no substitute for constant practice.
As a stepping stone, comic books (especially those for kids) are of course a great choice. (I would have never learnt Japanese without a huge stack of manga.)
To practice listening comprehsion and to get into more complex vocabulary and casual language, I really like to watch Zondag met Lubach — thanks to Gabi who got me to watch the show with her. The show is very entertaining, focused around one topic with recurring vocabluary, and you can get all past shows online. (On YouTube, to get started, you can also get English subtitles for many episodes and Dutch subtitles when you start to get the hang of it and to more easily look up words.)
And then, there is speaking. Unfortunately, I know of no better way than to repeatedly and publicly embarrass yourself to make progress here. People won’t understand you, you will say silly things, and you will fail to understand their response. Over and over again.
But it is all worth it for the moments of success. For instance, when you leave a shop for the first time without the Dutch shop assistant having felt the need to switch to English. Tot ziens!
(*) Everybody here switches to fluent English in a heartbeat when they realise that you don’t understand them, but to me, assuming residency in a country obliges me to learn the local language. (I have never been able to relate to that expat lifestyle, where you stay in that bubble of like-minded foreigners.)