Loooong road ahead... you got your guns?

Lesson 1- pronounciation

Zus = Sister (in Dutch)

My new private dutch teacher: zus...

me: zus...

her: no, ZUS

me: ZUS

her: ZUS

me: ZUS!!!!!!!

her: ZUS!!

me: ZUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

her: ok, lets just go to the next word...

Yesterday I had my first private Dutch lesson. The thing is, due to my immense time commuting to work back in New York, I've gotten quite far in my own study of Dutch and was able to place into an intermediate level class in the language school (classes start in a week). I can understand lots, for example I can read the Metro in Dutch, and many various other things. However, because I studied on my own I wasn't exactly able to practice and correct my own pronunciation even though mumbling to yourself on nyc public transportation is THE norm.

So first lesson... hmmm I just could not HEAR the difference between what the teacher, Sarina, was saying and what I was repeating... I don't get it, I'm a master of the Spanish rolling RRRRrrrr; I can even fake a pretty good Napoletan dialect!!! But this Dutch thing... hmm... it's even more difficult then BIKING!

There is no use for the Spanish "R'' nor the sway of Italian to help me learn Dutch, but one thing my previous experience with languages taught me is that you must put in the TIME. There is no way around it, to speak well and to speak correctly you must practice and that takes time.

I'm going to study with Sarina once or twice a week to really concentrate on talking and making correct sentences. Judging from the first lesson, this promises to be very helpful, the entire time she spoke Dutch exclusively and if I didn't understand something she phrased it differently but always in Dutch. On my part I continually kept trying to feed her various cookies and explained (in Dutch) that I come from a family that eats ALL the time. She is the typical tall and slender Dutch chick, but boy oh boy, she likes the cookies!! We're going to get along great! More cookies she eats, less for me!! Hurray! Oh yeah, and the whole language lessons thing is really helpful too... Excuse me, I will now go and gargle... Oh, not for the purpose of dental hygiene, just to practice the gurgling "G" in Dutch... Ohhhhhhhhh.....

(Picture above: is one of the trails leading to the beach... it looks isolated but right next to it is a bike pad and next to that is a road... but there are other trails just like it going through the dunes that ARE isolated, I'll only go on them with big bad Vito, because I don't want to be robbed at gun point or anything... yep... It'll also take TIME to rid myself of New York City mentality.)