Contents

Welcome to the Michel Thomas Method 1

About Michel Thomas 3
Index to Foundation Dutch 4
Welcome to the Michel Thomas Method
Congratulations on purchasing a truly remarkable way to learn a language. With
the Michel Thomas Method there’s no reading, no writing and no homework.
Just sit back, absorb, and soon you’ll be speaking another language with
confidence.

The Michel Thomas Method works by breaking a language down into its
component parts and enabling you to reconstruct the language yourself –
to form your own sentences and to say what you want, when you want.
By learning the language in small steps, you can build it up yourself to
produce ever more complicated sentences.

In the French, German, Italian and Spanish Foundation courses, Michel

Thomas himself teaches two students who have no previous knowledge
of the language – or, in the case of the Intermediate courses, students
who know only what they learned in the Foundation courses. You join in
as the third student in Michel’s class, and learn with them. The courses
are unscripted: you hear the students’ progression in the studio from
absolute beginners to confident speakers – including their mistakes and
Michel’s subsequent corrections. The French, German, Italian and Spanish
Vocabulary Courses were devised after Michel’s death by Dr Rose Lee
Hayden, who worked closely with him in his language school in New York.
The methodology is again cumulative, but in these courses the teacher
is assisted by two native speakers in order to advance learners in their
pronunciation as well as their vocabulary.

The Arabic (Egyptian and Modern Standard), Dutch, Greek, Hindi,

Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and
Swedish Start, Foundation and Intermediate courses were developed by the
team at Hodder that produced Michel’s original French, German, Italian
and Spanish Foundation and Intermediate courses. The teachers, who are
native speakers, or else are assisted by native speakers, similarly teach
students with no previous knowledge of the language and carefully follow
Michel Thomas’s Method. The Egyptian Arabic, Mandarin and Russian
Vocabulary Courses follow the same unscripted format, with the same
teaching teams and students learning in the studio.

1
The key to your success in these all-audio courses is for you to
understand what you learn, and then to internalize it. To do so, you must
take an active part in the process. When the teacher asks, ‘How do you
say …?’, use your pause button to give yourself time to think out your
answer and say it out loud (or in your head). Then release the pause
button, and listen to the answer given on the recording. In this way you
will experience a constant sense of progression, a constant sense of
learning, that you will find exciting, stimulating and self-rewarding.

Perfected over 50 years, the all-audio Michel Thomas Method has been
used by millions of people around the world.

Now it’s your turn.

To get started, simply start the audio!

2
About Michel Thomas
Michel Thomas (1914–2005) was a gifted linguist who mastered more
than ten languages in his lifetime and became famous for teaching much
of Hollywood’s ‘A’ list how to speak a foreign language. Film stars such as
Woody Allen, Emma Thompson and Barbra Streisand paid thousands of
dollars each for face-to-face lessons.

Michel, a Polish Jew, developed his method after discovering the untapped
potential of the human mind during his traumatic wartime experiences.
The only way he survived this period of his life, which included being
captured by the Gestapo, was by concentrating and placing his mind
beyond the physical. Fascinated by this experience, he was determined
that after the war he would devote himself to exploring further the
power of the human mind, and so dedicated his life to education.

In 1947, he moved to Los Angeles and set up the Michel Thomas

Language Centers, from where he taught languages for over fifty years in
New York, Beverly Hills and London.

Michel Thomas died at his home in New York City on Saturday 8th
January 2005. He was 90 years old.

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Index to Foundation Dutch
Hour 1  Track 1
Introduction; relationship of Dutch to English.

Hour 1  Track 2
Similarities in sound and spelling: welkom = ‘welcome’; de kat zat op de
mat = ‘the cat sat on the mat’; leren ‘to learn’; een, twee, drie = ‘one,
two, three’; water (w pronounced like English ‘v’) = ‘water’; is (final
s pronounced like the ‘s’ in English ‘sun’) = ‘is’; het = ‘it’ (het is often
unstressed and sounds like ‘ut’; hier (ie pronounced like English ‘ee’) =
‘here’; warm = ‘warm’.

Hour 1  Track 3
hè? is used for a question to which you expect a positive reply, like English
‘is it?’, ‘haven’t you?’
niet = ‘not’; goed (g pronounced like Scottish ‘ch’ in ‘loch’; oe pronounced
like English ‘oo’; final d sounds like English ‘t’) = ‘good’ or ‘right’ (correct);
zo = ‘like that, that way’; te = ‘too’; heel (ee pronounced like English ‘ay’) =
‘very’; dit = ‘this’; dat = ‘that’; wat = ‘what’.

Hour 1  Track 4
daar = ‘there’; ik = ‘I’; ik drink = ‘I drink’ and ‘I am drinking’; werk = ‘work’;
ik werk = ‘I work’ and ‘I am working’; nu = ‘now’; ik doe = ‘I do’ and ‘I am
doing’; later = ‘later’; ik wil = ‘I want’; je = ‘you’; wil je? = ‘want you? = do
you want?’; en = ‘and’.

Hour 1  Track 5
The Dutch infinitive, the ‘to’ form of the verb, like ‘to drink’, always ends in
n, and usually in en; drinken = ‘to drink’; werken = ‘to work’; wil je drinken?
= ‘want you to drink? = do you want to drink?’ eten = ‘to eat’; doen = ‘to
do’; waar = ‘where’.
When you have two verbs in a sentence and the second verb is in the ‘to’
form (e.g., ‘do you want to do this?’), the second verb goes at the end of
the sentence: wil je dit doen? We will call the verbs that send the second verb
to the end ‘trigger’ verbs.

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Hour 1  Track 6
voor (v pronounced like English ‘f ’; oo like English ‘o’ in ‘for’) = ‘for’; kan je? =
‘can you?, are you able to?’ The final n of the Dutch infinitive (‘to’ form of
the verb) is not always pronounced. ik kan = ‘I can’; ‘can’ is a ‘trigger’ verb in
Dutch, sending the next verb to the end of the sentence. voor je = ‘for you’

Hour 1  Track 7
zien = ‘to see’; ik wil het niet = ‘I want it not = I don’t want it’; ik wil het
niet drinken = ‘I want it not to drink = I don’t want to drink it’ – words
like het and je usually come before niet. wil je? is used for ‘would you like?’
waarom = ‘why’; ik zie = ‘I see’.

Hour 1  Track 8
heel goed = ‘very good’ or ‘very well’; ik zie het niet goed = ‘I see it not
good = I don’t see it well’. zijn = ‘to be’; how to pronounce the Dutch ij
sound. komen = ‘to come’

Hour 1  Track 9
we = ‘we’; we willen = ‘we want’. For ‘we’, we use the whole verb, the ‘to’
form; willen = ‘to want’ – a ‘trigger’ verb; we komen = ‘we come’ or ‘we
are coming’. gauw = ‘soon’; ik kom = ‘I come’ or ‘I am coming’. we eten =
‘we eat’ and ‘we are eating’; wat eten we? = ‘what eat we? = what are we
eating?’

Hour 1  Track 10
middag = ‘afternoon’; dag = ‘day’; vanmiddag = ‘this afternoon’; dag is also
used to mean ‘Hello’ or ‘Goodbye’. gaan = ‘to go’; we gaan = ‘we go’ and
‘we are going’; ik ga = ‘I go’ and ‘I am going’; ga je? = ‘go you? = are you
going’ or ‘do you go?’; gaan is a trigger verb.

Hour 1  Track 11
beginnen = ‘to begin’; ik begin = ‘I begin’ or ‘I am beginning’. maar = ‘but’;
nu niet = ‘now not = not now’; hier niet = ‘here not = not here’; daar niet
= ‘there not = not there’.

Hour 1  Track 12
hem = ‘him’; haar = ‘her’; helpen = ‘to help’; me = ‘me’; the final e in Dutch
words is always pronounced but not stressed. het spijt me = ‘it pains me
= I’m sorry’.

5
Hour 1  Track 13
ik moet = ‘I must / have to’; je moet = ‘you must / have to’; we moeten = ‘we
must / have to’, from moeten = ‘to have to’; moeten is a trigger verb. vinden
= ‘to find’ (something); ik moet haar vinden = ‘I must / have to find her’.

Hour 1  Track 14
weten = ‘to know’; in Dutch you always need to indicate what it is you
know or don’t know, so ik weet het = ‘I know (it)’; we weten het = ‘we
know (it)’; often the het is not stressed.
The word order is changed when you ask a question: weet je? = ‘do you
know?’ The verb form for je is often different for questions, but not for
weten.
Ik kan het niet vinden = ‘I can’t find it’

Hour 2  Track 1
begrijpen = ‘to understand’ or ‘to get to grips with’; how to pronounce the
Dutch ij; begrijpen also requires you to say what it is you understand, so ik
begrijp het = ‘I understand (it)’; we begrijpen je = ‘we understand you’; ik
begrijp je niet = ‘I don’t understand you’.
In Dutch, unlike English, there is only one way of expressing the present
tense, so there are no separate tenses as in the English ‘you understand’,
‘you are understanding’ or ‘you do understand’. Begrijp je me? ‘Do you
understand me?’

Hour 2  Track 2
hebben = ‘to have’; we hebben = ‘we have’; ik heb = ‘I have’; the final b isn’t
stressed and sounds like a ‘p’. We hebben het niet voor hem = ‘we have it
not for him = we don’t have it for him’.
The word order changes when asking a question: waarom heb je het niet?
= ‘Why have you it not? = Why don’t you have it?’; Wat heb je? = ‘what
have you (got)’ or ‘what do you have?’ niets = ‘nothing’; iets = ‘something’;
ik wil niets drinken = ‘I don’t want to drink anything’. Ik heb iets = ‘I have
something’

Hour 2  Track 3
zeggen = ‘to say or to tell’; ik wil je iets zeggen = ‘I want to tell you
something’; wat kan je me nu zeggen? = ‘what can you tell me now?’
Keep the niet with the ‘to’ form of the verb: ik kan het nu niet vinden = ‘I
can’t find it now’.

6
want = ‘for’, meaning ‘because’; want ik wil het hebben = ‘for / because I
want to have it’.

Hour 2  Track 4
Ik moet het gauw doen = ‘I have to do it soon’
ze = ‘they’; ze has the same verb form as we (‘we’), i.e. the ‘to’ form of the
verb; ze moeten het eten = ‘they have to eat it’.
geven = ‘to give’; ik moet haar iets geven = ‘I must give her something’; ik
geef = ‘I give’; in Dutch a word cannot end in ‘v’ (or ‘z’), so the ‘v’ from
geven becomes an f.
kan je het zo doen?= ‘can you do it like that?’

Hour 2  Track 5
nodig = ‘needed’ or ‘necessary’ (the -ig ending is always a neutral sound);
nee = ‘no’; ja = ‘yes’; nee, dat is niet nodig = ‘no, that isn’t necessary’; ik heb
het nodig = ‘I have it needed = I need it’; heb je het nodig? = ‘do you need
it?’

Hour 2  Track 6
morgen = ‘tomorrow’; ik wil morgen hier zijn = ‘I want tomorrow here to
be = I want to be here tomorrow’.

Hour 2  Track 7
vandaag = ‘today’; vandaag niet = ‘today not = not today’; ik help je
vandaag niet = ‘I’m not helping you today’. laat = ‘late’; het is te laat
vandaag = ‘it is too late today’. hoe = ‘how’; hoe doe je dat? = ‘how do you
do that?’; hoe laat is het? = ‘how late is it? = what time is it?’; hoe laat wil je
morgen hier zijn? = ‘what time do you want to be here tomorrow?’

Hour 2  Track 8
In Dutch, events that will take place in the future are usually expressed in
the present tense, so ik doe het morgen = ‘I will do it tomorrow’; ik wil het
later doen = ‘I want to do it later’; bellen = ‘to phone’; ik bel je morgen =
‘I’ll phone you tomorrow’.

Hour 2  Track 9
blijven = ‘to stay’; we blijven niet, hè? = ‘we’re not staying, are we?’; lang = ‘long’;
hoe lang blijven we vanmiddag? = ‘how long are we staying this afternoon?’; ik
blijf = ‘I stay’; hoe lang kan je vandaag blijven? = ‘how long can you stay today?’

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Hour 2  Track 10
Words ending in ‘-ation’ in English, like ‘information’, end in -atie in Dutch,
informatie; situatie = ‘situation’; operatie = ‘operation’; reputatie = ‘reputation’,
etc. de = one of the words meaning ‘the’; de situatie is goed = ‘the situation
is good’.

Hour 2  Track 11
hij = ‘he’; hij heeft = ‘he has’; hij heeft de inspiratie nodig = ‘he needs the
inspiration’.
ze = ‘she’; this is the same word as for ‘they’ in Dutch, but the verb ending
will tell you which is meant: ze hebben = ‘they have’, but ze heeft = ‘she
has’. ‘He’, ‘she’, and ‘it’ have the same verb form and there is almost always
a t at the end of it. There are a few exceptions: the trigger verbs wil – ‘­he
/ she / it wants’, kan – ‘he / she / it can’, heeft – ‘he / she / it has’, and is –
‘he / she / it is’.
slecht = ‘bad’; de situatie is slecht = ‘the situation is bad’.

Hour 2  Track 12
If words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘happy’, etc. are followed by another word which
they describe, they have an extra ‘e’ on the end, which is pronounced as
an unstressed ‘uh’: slechte informatie = ‘bad information’; het is een slechte
situatie = ‘it is a bad situation’. In dat is goed = ‘that is good’ the ‘d’ sounds
like a t but in goede informatie = ‘good information’ it sounds like a ‘d’ again.
een = ‘a’; the same word as een = ‘one’ but pronounced differently.
morgen = ‘tomorrow’ and ‘morning’; goedemorgen = ‘good morning’.

Hour 3  Track 1
goedemiddag = good afternoon; al = ‘already’; ik heb het al = ‘I have it
already’.
You can use the verb gaan ‘to go’ to express the future: ik ga het morgen
doen = ‘I’m going to do it tomorrow’.

Hour 3  Track 2
jullie = ‘you (all)’, when there are more than one of ‘you’; jullie takes the
same verb form as we, the ‘to’ form of the verb; jullie gaan niet = ‘you (all)
aren’t going’; wat gaan jullie eten? = ‘what are you (all) going to eat’? naar
= ‘to’ (a place); or naar toe = ‘to(wards)’, as in waar gaan jullie naar toe? =
‘where are you going to?’; waar willen jullie naar toe gaan = ‘where do you
(all) want to go to?’

8
Hour 3  Track 3
hoe lang blijven ze? = ‘how long will they be staying?’; jullie blijven hier, hè? =
‘you’re (all) staying here, aren’t you?’ – a question to which you expect a
positive answer.
kunnen = ‘to be able’; we kunnen = ‘we can’; hoe lang kunnen jullie hier
blijven? = ‘how long can you stay here?’

Hour 3  Track 4
blijf je hier? = ‘are you staying here?’; even = ‘just (a minute)’; blijf even hier
= ‘stay here (a minute)’; kom even hier = ‘come here (a minute)’. binnen =
‘inside’; kom even binnen = ‘come inside a minute’. wachten = ‘to wait’; ik
wacht = ‘I wait’ (‘I am waiting’); wacht even = ‘wait a moment’.
weg = ‘away’ or (the) ‘way’; ga even weg = ‘go away (for a moment)’.

Hour 3  Track 5
hij heeft het al = ‘he has it already’; ze heeft het al nodig = ‘she needs it
already’; hij geeft = ‘he gives’

Hour 3  Track 6
U is the form of ‘you’ used in formal situations and often with older people;
it is both singular and plural. Verb forms with u always end in a t: u komt
morgen = ‘you are coming tomorrow’; werkt u hier? = ‘do you work here?’

Hour 3  Track 7
The verb form of je also takes a t when it is not a question: kan je dat
doen? = ‘can you do that?’, but je kunt dat doen = ‘you can do that’. Almost
all the plural forms (‘we’, ‘you’, and ‘they’) take the ‘to’ form of the verb:
we kunnen = ‘we can’; jullie drinken = ‘you (all) drink’. But when u refers
to more than one person it still takes the same form as je, i.e. with the t.
Je gaat naar Amsterdam = ‘you are going to Amsterdam’; jullie kunnen het
zien = ‘you (all) can see it’; u doet het = ‘you (formal) do it’.

Hour 3  Track 8
With ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’, the formal ‘you’, and informal ‘you’ in a statement (not
a question), the verb ends in t: hij werkt = ‘he works’; je gaat = ‘you go’.

Hour 3  Track 9
met = ‘with’; hoe gaat het met je? = ‘how’s it going with you?, how are you?’
ons = ‘us’

9
Hour 3  Track 10
Even turns a ‘can you’ question into a polite request: kunt u me even helpen?
= ‘could you (formal) help me?’ It goes next to the verb it belongs to.
alstublieft (formal) or alsjeblieft (informal) = ‘if you please’; kan je even
wachten, alsjeblieft? = ‘could you (just) wait a moment please?’

Hour 3  Track 11
duur = ‘dear (expensive)’; kopen = ‘to buy’, with a long ‘o’; ik koop = ‘I buy’;
ze koopt = ‘she buys’; we gaan het kopen = ‘we are going to buy it’. te =
‘too’; het is te duur = ‘it is too expensive’.

Hour 3  Track 12
klaar = ‘ready (finished)’. In Dutch, the future is expressed using the present
tense: het is morgen klaar = ‘it is (will be) ready tomorrow’.
alles = ‘everything’; niets = ‘nothing’ (often pronounced niks in colloquial
language); ik zie niets = ‘I see nothing’.
kunnen and willen are special trigger verbs in which the ‘he / she / it’ form
does not end in a t: hij kan alles zien = ‘he can see everything’.

Hour 4  Track 1
leuk = ‘nice (pretty, fun)’; pronunciation of -eu; ik vind het leuk = ‘I find it
nice = I like it’; ze zijn leuk = ‘they are nice’. allemaal = ‘all of it’, ‘all of us’
or ‘all of them (everybody)’; het is allemaal goed = ‘it is all good’.

Hour 4  Track 2
vriend = ‘friend’; haar vriend blijft niet = ‘her friend is not staying’; vrienden
= friends; in Dutch the plural is usually made by adding -en. All plural
nouns are de words; de vrienden = ‘the friends’. wil je een vriend? = ‘do you
want a friend?’; hij heeft een leuke kat = ‘he has a nice cat’; en = ‘and’

Hour 4  Track 3
mooi = ‘nice (beautiful)’; een mooie dag = ‘a nice day’

Hour 4  Track 4
In Dutch, to say you enjoy doing something, you say that you do it with
pleasure: graag = ‘with pleasure’, or ‘gladly’; ik drink graag = ‘I like drinking’;
graag is also sometimes used as a response to an offer, meaning ‘(yes,)

10
please’; hij doet het heel graag = ‘he likes doing it very much’; wij helpen
hem niet graag = ‘we don’t like helping him’.
If the stem of the verb (what’s left when you take off the -en ending of
the whole verb) already ends in a t, you don’t add another in the ‘you’
form; if the stem of the verb ends in a d, you don’t pronounce the t in
the ‘you’ form although it is there. ze wacht niet graag = ‘she doesn’t like
waiting’.

Hour 4  Track 5
Wil je water? = ‘Do you want water?’ In Dutch, if you want to stress the
‘you’, you say jij instead of je. Wil jij water? = ‘do you want water?’; ja, graag
= ‘yes, please’. This also happens with ze, which becomes zij when it is
stressed, both for ‘she’ and for ‘they’, and with we, which becomes wij. ook
= ‘too’ or ‘also’; kan zij ook komen? = ‘can she come too?’; ik ook = ‘me
too’; wij willen het ook = ‘we want it too’; ik ga ook graag naar Amsterdam
= ‘I also like going to Amsterdam’.

Hour 4  Track 6
nee dank je or nee dank u = ‘no, thank you’. ik wil graag water = ‘I would
like water’; but willen jullie iets drinken? = ‘do you (all) want something to
drink?’ or ‘would you (all) like something to drink’; you don’t add graag
(‘please’) when you are asking if somebody wants something.

Hour 4  Track 7
mogelijk = ‘possible’; the -lijk ending is pronounced ‘luck’; onmogelijk =
‘impossible’; Many Dutch words can be made negative by adding on- at
the beginning.
When you make a comparison in Dutch, you can use the word wel to
replace the verb if the comparison is positive: dit is niet goed maar dat wel
= ‘this isn’t good but that is’. If the comparison is negative, you can use niet
instead: dit is mogelijk maar dat niet = ‘this is possible but that isn’t’.

Hour 4  Track 8
huis = ‘house’ or ‘home’; pronunciation of ui; ik ga naar huis = ‘I am going
home’; thuis = ‘at home’. ik ben = ‘I am’; ik ben hier niet or ik ben niet hier
= ‘I am not here’; ben je? = ‘are you?’; je bent = ‘you are’; hij is = ‘he is’; ben
je morgen thuis? = ‘are you at home tomorrow?’; wij/we zijn niet thuis =
‘we are not at home’.

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Hour 4  Track 9
moe = ‘tired’; ik blijf vanmiddag thuis want ik ben moe = ‘I am staying home
this afternoon for (because) I am tired’. omdat also means ‘because’, but
omdat sends the verb(s) to the end of the sentence (the omdat effect):
omdat het klaar is = ‘because it is ready’; omdat hij een vriend wil hebben =
‘because he wants to have a friend’.

Hour 4  Track 10
saai = ‘boring’; het is een saaie dag = ‘it is a boring day’.

Hour 5  Track 1
druk = ‘busy’; ze heeft het heel druk = ‘she has it very busy = she is busy’.

Hour 5  Track 2
kosten = ‘to cost’; veel = ‘much’ or ‘a lot’; hoeveel = ‘how much’; ik wil graag
weten hoeveel het kost = ‘I would like to know how much it costs’; het
kost te veel = ‘it costs too much’.

Hour 5  Track 3
wanneer = ‘when’; wanneer beginnen we? = ‘when do we begin?’ With all
of these question words (waarom?, waar?, hoe?, wat?), when they are not
at the start of the question the verb goes to the end, like it does with
omdat: ik weet niet wanneer ze begint = ‘I don’t know when she begins
(will begin)’; kunt u me zeggen hoeveel het kost? = ‘can you tell me how
much it costs?’

Hour 5  Track 4
wie = ‘who?’; wie is dat = ‘who is that?’; ik weet niet wie het is = ‘I don’t
know who it is’.

Hour 5  Track 5
mag ik? = ‘may I?’ or ‘can I?’; from mogen = ‘to be allowed to’: mag ik een
koffie? = ‘may I (have) a coffee?’; U mag het hebben = ‘you may have it’;
Mag dat? = ‘Is that allowed?’

Hour 5  Track 6
vragen = ‘to ask’; ik vraag = ‘I ask’; mag ik u iets vragen? = ‘may I ask you
something?’; de vraag = ‘ the question’.

12
Hour 5  Track 7
makkelijk = ‘easy’; the ending -lijk can often be translated as ‘-able’ in
English (as in mogelijk = ‘possible = do-able’); een makkelijke vraag = ‘an
easy question’; nieuw = ‘new’; een nieuwe vraag = ‘a new question’.

Hour 5  Track 8
The Dutch often make things small, or less formal (more fun), by adding -je at
the end: ik heb een vraagje voor je = ‘I have a little question for you’; huisje =
‘little house’; katje = ‘little cat’ or ‘kitten’. uit = ‘out’; een dagje uit = ‘a (fun) day
out’.

Hour 5  Track 9
alles goed? = ‘everything OK?’; beter = ‘better’; het gaat veel beter = ‘it’s
going much better’; voelen = ‘to feel’; ik voel = ‘I feel’. In Dutch, when you
are talking about how you (or somebody else) feel(s), you say ik voel
me beter = ‘I feel myself better = I feel better’; hoe voel je je? = ‘how
do you feel (in yourself)?’; hoe voelen jullie je = ‘how do you (all) feel (in
yourselves)’?; zich = ‘himself ’, ‘herself ’, ‘itself ’, ‘themselves’ and ‘yourself ’
(formal); so, hij voelt zich goed = ‘he feels (himself) well’.

Hour 5  Track 10
zich wassen = ‘to wash oneself ’; ik was me = ‘I wash (myself)’; wij wassen
ons = ‘we wash (ourselves)’; ze wast zich = ‘she is washing (herself)’; zich
haasten = ‘to hurry oneself ’; wij moeten ons haasten = ‘we must hurry
(ourselves)’.

Hour 5  Track 11
Different pronunciations of een = ‘a’ and een = ‘one’; geen = ‘none’ (not a
/ not any); ik heb geen werk maar jij wel = ‘I have no work but you do’.

Hour 6  Track 1
tijd = ‘time’; ik heb geen tijd = ‘I have no time’. honger = ‘hunger’; ik heb
honger = ‘I have hunger = I am hungry’.

Hour 6  Track 2
interesse = ‘interest’; hij heeft interesse = ‘he has interest = he is interested’.
(de) kans = ‘(the) chance’ or ‘opportunity’; ze heeft geen kans = ‘she has
no chance’.

13
Hour 6  Track 3
Ik wil werken = ‘I want to work’. Use om te = ‘for to’ in phrases like: ik wil
tijd om te werken = ‘I want time (for) to work’; wij hebben geen tijd om het
te zien = ‘we have no time (for) to see it’.

Hour 6  Track 4
altijd = ‘always’; vaak = ‘often’; het is vaak te laat om het te doen = ‘it is
often too late to do it’; belangrijk = ‘important’ (rijk = ‘rich’).

Hour 6  Track 5
spreken = ‘to speak’; ik spreek = ‘I speak’; engels = ‘English’; spreekt u
Engels? = ‘do you speak English?’; Nederlands = ‘Dutch’; Nederland = ‘The
Netherlands’; hij spreekt geen Nederlands = ‘he doesn’t speak any Dutch’.
de is used as ‘the’ for all plurals, words ending in -atie, and many other
words, but there is also another word for ‘the’, which is het: het werk =
‘the work’. All words ending in -je are het words.

Hour 6  Track 6
in het Nederlands = ‘in (the) Dutch’; hoe zeg je dat in het Nederlands?
= ‘How do you say that in (the) Dutch?’ het is often contracted to t in
speech. leren = ‘to learn’; ik leer = ‘I learn’.

Hour 6  Track 7
zou = ‘would’ or ‘supposed to’ is also a trigger verb; hij zou het doen = ‘he
was supposed to do it’.

Hour 6  Track 8
You can’t use the verb gaan (‘to go’) when you’re speaking about
something that is ‘going to be’; gaan can only be used to mean ‘going to’
when the following verb is an action verb. Ik wil weten hoe laat het klaar
is = ‘I want to know when it is (going to be) ready’.

Hour 6  Track 9
als = ‘if ’; ze wil vandaag werken als het mag = ‘she wants to work today if
it’s allowed’; als also has the omdat effect (of sending the verb to the end).

14
Hour 6  Track 10
Amerika = ‘America’; mogen = ‘to be allowed’; wij mogen = ‘we are
allowed’ (ik mag = ‘I am allowed’).

Hour 6  Track 11
Ik wacht hier als je dat wil = ‘I’ll wait here if you want (that)’

Hour 7  Track 1
als = ‘if ’ meaning ‘in case’, but of = ‘if ’ meaning ‘whether or not’; both
words have the omdat effect. Ik wil weten of je nu komt = ‘I want to know
if (whether) you’re coming now’

Hour 7  Track 2
ik wacht al lang = ‘I’ve been waiting a long time’ (note present tense).
wonen = ‘to live’ (in a place); ik woon = ‘I live’; ik woon al lang in Nederland
= ‘I’ve been living a long time (already) in The Netherlands’; Engeland
= ‘England’; hoe lang ben je al in Engeland? = ‘how long have you been
(already) in England?’

Hour 7  Track 3
(het) jaar = ‘(the) year’; jaren = ‘years’; eeuw = ‘century’ or ‘ages’;
pronunciation of eeuw; ik ben hier al een eeuw = ‘I’ve (already) been here
for ages’.

Hour 7  Track 4
All trigger verbs send the verbs to the end; the special trigger verbs
(kunnen ‘to be able to’, willen ‘to want’, moeten ‘to have to, to must’ and
mogen ‘to be allowed to’) don’t need a -t in the he / she / it form
(i.e. they’re the same as ‘I’) in the present. In the past tense they also have
common forms.

Hour 7  Track 5, Track 6

ik kan = ‘I can’; ik kon = ‘I could’ in the sense of ‘I was able to’; ze kon =
‘she could’. The singular forms (‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he / she / it’) are all the same
in the past tense for all the trigger verbs, as are the plural forms (‘we /
you (all) / they’). gisteren = ‘yesterday’; avond = ‘evening’; gisteravond =
‘yesterday evening’; goedenavond = ‘good evening’.

15
Hour 7  Track 7
we / jullie / zij konden = ‘we / you (all) / they could’; wij konden het niet
begrijpen = ‘we couldn’t understand it’; wij konden niet met haar werken =
‘we couldn’t work with her’; ik werk niet graag met jullie = ‘I don’t like to
work with you (all)’.

Hour 7  Track 8
ze = ‘she’, ‘they’ and ‘them’; was = ‘was’. In Dutch, in general, time comes
before place: hij was gisteren in Amsterdam = ‘he was in Amsterdam
yesterday’.

Hour 7  Track 9
waren = ‘were’, for ‘we’, ‘you (all)’ and ‘they’; wanneer waren jullie daar? = ‘when
were you (all) there?’
had = ‘had’ for ‘I’ ‘you’ and ‘he / she / it’; ik had honger = ‘I was hungry’;
hadden = ‘had’ for ‘we’, ‘you (all)’ and ‘they’; jullie hadden honger = ‘you (all)
were hungry’.

Hour 7  Track 10
kom even hier = ‘come here a moment’; hij kon vandaag niet komen = ‘he
couldn’t come today’; niet usually comes after time phrases.
proberen = ‘to try’; ik probeer = ‘I try’; hij gaat het later proberen = ‘he’s
going to try it later’.

Hour 7  Track 11
wachten op = ‘to wait for’; ik wacht op je = ‘I’m waiting for you’. moest =
‘had to’ for ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘he / she / it’; ze moest op me wachten = ‘she had
to wait for me’.

Hour 7  Track 12
To make a real promise of something you are going to do in the future,
you would use zal = ‘shall / will’, for all singular forms (‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘he /
she / it’); it is also a trigger verb: ik zal je morgen helpen = ‘I shall help you
tomorrow’; wij zullen je helpen = ‘we will help you’.

Hour 8  Track 1
wilde = ‘wanted’: ik wilde = ‘I wanted’; ik wilde niets = ‘I wanted nothing’;
wij wilden hier wonen = ‘we wanted to live here’.

16
Hour 8  Track 2
Nouns which end in -atie all form verbs which end in -eren; so, combinatie
= ‘combination’, combineren = ‘to combine’; reparatie = ‘repair’; repareren
= ‘to repair’; ik kon het repareren = ‘I could repair it’.

Hour 8  Track 3
laten = ‘to let’ or ‘to allow’; laten is a trigger verb: laat me gaan = ‘let me
go’; ik wil het laten doen = ‘I want it to let to do = I want to have it done’.

Hour 8  Track 4
schoon = ‘clean’; maken = ‘make’; schoonmaken = ‘to make clean = to
clean’; kun je het laten schoonmaken = ‘can you have it cleaned?’

Hour 8  Track 5
hij gaat niet weg = ‘he’s not going away’; weggaan = ‘to away go = to go
away’; ze willen weggaan = ‘they want to go away’, but wij gaan morgen
weg = ‘we are going away tomorrow’; zonder = ‘without’; ik wil niet zonder
jullie weggaan = ‘I don’t want to go away without you (all)’.

Hour 8  Track 6
uitgaan = ‘to go out’; vanavond = ‘this evening’; hij wil vanavond uitgaan =
‘he wants to go out this evening’.

Hour 8  Track 7
met = ‘with’ but mee = ‘with (in a verb)’; meekomen = ‘to come along
with’; mag ik meekomen? = ‘can I come along?’; meedoen = ‘to join in with’;
doe je mee? = ‘are you joining in?’; hij kon gisteren niet meedoen = ‘he
couldn’t join in yesterday’.

Hour 8  Track 8
morgenmiddag = ‘tomorrow afternoon’; aan = ‘to’ or ‘at’; aankomen =
‘to arrive’; ik kom morgen aan = ‘I am arriving tomorrow’; ik wil morgen
aankomen = ‘I want to arrive tomorrow’; binnen = ‘in(side)’; binnenkomen
= ‘to come in’; hij komt niet binnen = ‘he is not coming in’. All these
prefixes (weg, aan, mee, uit, binnen) can go in front of verbs like komen ‘to
come’, doen ‘to do’ or gaan ‘to go’ and have their own meaning. These
prefixes are all stressed and can all be split from the verb.

17
Hour 8  Track 9
halen = ‘to fetch’; ik haal = ‘I fetch’; ophalen = ‘to pick up (collect)’; ik haal
ze vanavond op = ‘I’ll pick them up this evening’; herhalen = ‘to repeat’; her-
doesn’t have a meaning of its own like the other prefixes so the stress is
on -halen and the her- can’t be separated from the rest of the verb; we
herhalen het = ‘we are repeating it’.

Hour 8  Track 10
hopen = ‘to hope’; hopen dat = ‘to hope that’; ik hoop dat = ‘I hope that’;
in hopen dat, the dat has the omdat effect, sending the verb to the end;
moeilijk = ‘difficult’; ik hoop dat dit niet te moeilijk is = ‘I hope that this isn’t
too difficult’.

Hour 8  Track 11
denken = ‘to think’; denken dat = ‘to think that’; ik denk dat = ‘I think that’;
ik denk dat ze het al weet = ‘I think (that) she knows it already’; zitten =
‘to sit’; ik zit = ‘I sit’.

Hour 8  Track 12
er = ‘there’; op = ‘on, on it’; erop = ‘thereon’; de kat zit erop = ‘the cat is
sitting on it’; erin = ‘therein’; ze zit erin = she’s sitting in it’; ermee = ‘with it’;
wat kan je ermee doen? = ‘what can you do with it?’ hoe gaat het ermee? =
‘how’s it going with it? how are things?’

18
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First published in 2008 by Hodder Education, an Hachette UK company.

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all rights reserved; in the content, Cobie Adkins-de Jong and Els Van Geyte.

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Impression 1
Year 2018
Foundation Dutch ISBN   978 1529 31877 7