The first lesson

The first lesson is always difficult: you are eager to learn as much as you can, but you have to start with the basics. One of the most basic things in any language is the alphabet. So that is what we started of with. Look at the following movie to see and hear the names of the letters in Dutch (note that the position of my mouth might not be perfect, but it gives a pretty good idea):



When you practice the alphabet, you will notice that some letters are easy to pronounce, because they are similar to letters or sounds in your own language. Others are really difficult, because they are totally new to you. In our lesson, the "g" posed the most problems, so we had to practice that a lot. To give you a hint: your tongue and lips have to be in the same position as for the English "g" (like in good), but instead of stopping the air coming through your throat, you have to really exhale.

After practicing the alphabet, we start to learn to read the first words. We always do this by spelling the letters first and then reading out the whole word. The first words we use are:

o, o, m ----- oom ----- uncle
o, o, k ----- ook ----- too
o, o, g ----- oog ----- eye

The last bit of the lesson we used for some Dutch phrases and words that are generally used:

Goedemorgen ----- Good morning
Goedemiddag ----- Good afternoon
Goedenavond ----- Good evening
Hallo -------------- Hello