Learn how to give simple directions to people
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| Hi everyone. I'm Thomas. Hallo, ik ben Tomas. Welcome to the Dutch Whiteboard Lessons. |
| In this lesson, you'll learn how to ask and give directions in Dutch. Let's get started. |
| Let's look at the dialogue. A student is asking for directions to get to the library. |
| While listening to the dialogue, I want you to focus on how directions are asked and how |
| they are given. Ready? Here we go. |
| Waar is de bibliotheek? De bibliotheek is naast de school. |
| Where is the library? The library is next to the school. |
| Let's do it one more time a little bit slower. |
| Waar is de bibliotheek? De bibliotheek is naast de school. |
| De bibliotheek is naast de school. |
| Now let's look at some more examples. Het park is achter de bibliotheek. |
| Het park is achter de bibliotheek. The park is behind the library. |
| Het theater is hier. The theater is here. |
| Did you notice? We always use the same pattern. Place is LOCATION. The structure of the pattern |
| is identical to the English. Place is location. |
| Let's look at the vocabulary. You'll notice that many words closely resemble their English |
| counterparts. First we have one that's slightly different. The library, de bibliotheek, |
| de bibliotheek, the bibliotheek. |
| Next, the park in Dutch is het park, het park, het park. |
| The bank in Dutch, de bank, de bank, de bank. |
| The coffee shop in Dutch is het cafe, het cafe, het cafe. |
| The theater in Dutch is het theater, het theater, het theater. |
| The school in Dutch is de school, de school, de school. |
| There in Dutch is daar, daar, daar. It's opposite here in Dutch, very similar sounding, hier, hier, |
| hier, hier. Behind in Dutch is achter, achter, achter. |
| And then opposite or in front of, same word in Dutch, tegenover, tegenover, tegenover. |
| Then next to in Dutch becomes naast, naast, naast. |
| Now let's look at left and right. Left or on the left in Dutch is links, links, links. |
| And right or on the right is rechts, rechts, rechts. |
| Knowing how to say left and right is of course very useful when giving directions. |
| The bibliotheek is links, the library is on the left. By the way, if you are looking for a place |
| to have a coffee in the Netherlands it's better to not use the English word |
| coffee shop. In Dutch the English term coffee shop is used for a very different type of establishment. |
| From our vocabulary you can tell that Dutch has two gendered articles, de and het. |
| De is both masculine and feminine, like the German der and die, or the French le and la, combined. |
| Het is neutral, like the German das. On the one hand this makes Dutch simpler than many European |
| languages because the gender of the words has no influence on the grammar, like it does in German, |
| French or Italian. However, there is no rule that explains which article to use, de or het. |
| If you understand some German or French you can often rely on the gender of the Dutch word being |
| the same as in those two languages. However, there are exceptions. The German das both, |
| title of the famous film, is de bot in Dutch. Learning the correct article is purely a matter |
| of experience. |
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