Update! (January 2004)

A kind reader has pointed me to the site http://www.speakdutch.nl, which independently duplicates this effort (i.e. uses the same original text, converted to html for the web). Most important, they have sound files and solutions.

While I appreciate the traffic here, you may wish to try that site, assuming it's still free. Now I'm off the hook, finally, for writing my own solutions!

What is this, and where did it come from?

In winter 2001 I was living in Belgium and trying to learn a little Dutch. I found this Integral Dutch Course posted many places on the web, such as http://www.sr.net/srnet/InfoSurinam/dutch.html (most often), http://web.hengeveld.com/dutch, and http://www.phys.uu.nl/~rutten/dutchcourse.pdf. It's a good source for learning the language but was badly in need of some formatting (hard to read, all one long page), so I decided to fix it up.

It seems like it was typed in from a textbook, but I haven't been able to find anything about the original book. I'd like to hear from anyone that knows more, especially for the sake of the gaps (see below). Since the document was already circulating freely, I assume any copyright rules are no longer applicable.

A reader has contributed a Microsoft Word copy of the course, available here as Integral_Dutch.doc. Contact the author with any questions.

Using Chapter I

There's not much use doing pronunciation exercises if you don't know how the words are supposed to sound. I recommend just skimming the chapter, finding a Dutch friend to pronounce things for you, or finding some other Dutch sources on the web with audio. Here are a few; see also "Other resources", below.

From learndutch.org:

From Taalthuis: From Marco Schuffelen's pages:

Formatting

What I've done has been mostly a) add styles and fonts by marking up the internal structure, b) make tables for verb charts and vocabulary, and c) boldface Dutch words, italicize English ones. This is for clarity where the languages are mixed, and replaces sporadic quotes.

I set out to make things consistent and easy to read. It's surprisingly hard to choose where to add formatting--for instance, I didn't want to boldface every single Dutch word nor italicize every English word, but only where one was found in the context of the other language and needed to be distinguished. And should I color orange (as vocab words) new words presented within a grammar section? Put them in table format? So in the end, no it's not universally consistent, but I didn't want to spend all my hours splitting hairs (I'd rather, say, sit down and go through the course myself).

Editing and gaps

Mostly I've just formatted; see above. In editing, I've changed only apparent errors. A number of places are missing small amounts of text (cut off in all the sources); I've marked these in yellow. If anyone has access to a complete version of the book, I'd love it if they would send me the contents of those gaps.

One small change in the material actually. When I learned personal pronouns (I, you, he/ik, je, hij), I learned the unstressed versions (je) before the stressed (jij). Many textbooks (including this one) list the stressed version first--but I thought the other way made more sense, so I switched the order in Chapter 2.

Other resources

There's a lot out there. Here are some other links for learning Dutch: Lists of links:

Questions? Comments?

Mail me! (address below)

Lisa Friedland, February 2002
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