Can I Speak Dutch?.......

Let me start this post by explaining the roller coaster of emotions I feel when I 'attempt to tackle' a language.

First, great excitement and enthusiasm. Followed by feverish learning.

Followed by total incapability and stupidity. Followed by defeat.

Resentment. Determination.

Enthusiastic anger (development there on the initial general 'enthusiasm').

I shall not be beaten and will learn this if it kills me

.....and finally I end up with a general 'get by' passable level of 'speakability'...... although obviously my English still leaves a lot to be desired.

I had been aware of Babbel as an on-line translation tool from before I went to Paris. In recent years they have developed very thorough interactive language courses in numerous languages. I subscribed to the French course (I have been intermittently learning French since school, but have always been missing some basic rules that I KNEW would bring some things together for me)

The French course is really superb. The whole set up is very easy to use; with an audio and typing learning system, you take yourself through the logically set up courses. Starting off with basic vocabulary, they build lessons on a common sense 'what do you need to know next for this to make sense' approach.

Sentence forming rules; tenses; gender..... all the particular oddities of a certain language that, once you know the form, you can apply and develop as you build your vocabulary. I would highly recommend it....

Great. Apart from the Dutch.

I only became aware of this very recently..........Dutch is not a very popular language.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that French and Spanish are spoken in many countries around the world, and therefore their 'Learning Demand' would far out-weigh Dutch or Swedish.

But Dutch really is not widely taught and as a result I've struggled to find an all-encompasing on line course. I did sign up to Babbel.....and it has been very good. But for Dutch they have vocabulary only lessons. Which means, I currently have a Dutch vocabulary of 300 words.

But I have no idea how to form a sentence..........