Week XI

[ReidSchluter]

This week I learned a lot of interrogative phrases as well as the future tense.Interrogative phrases are very self-explanatory, and require only that I memorize them. The questions who, what, when, where, & why, are instead wie, wat, wanneer, waar, & waarom. They also introduced me to useful words like 'hoe-how', 'hoeveel-how many', 'welk(e)-which', 'elk(e)-each', as well as some other slightly more complicated phrases.The future tense is fairly straightforward as well, and was far easier to learn given that I already know the more complicated past tense. The future requires a conjugated form of either 'gaan-to go' or 'zullen (no infinitive translation, but generally means 'will' exclusively in the future tense). Either word is always the second in the sentence after the pronoun, and there is an infinitive of the future verb at the end of the sentence (& therefore not too dissimilar from the past tense). 'Gaan' is used if it is something in the immediate future that you will definitely do, whereas 'zullen' is used for more vague situations such as 'Ik zal een niuew auto kopen-I will buy a new car'.As it is getting to the end of the semester, Jan has also given me a fair amount of websites to look at that will help me contextualize all that I have learned. I can now read Dutch, and understand the majority of what is being said. I still have something of a working knowledge of the language, but now possess a rounded knowledge of most of its fundamental aspects, and can therefore understand the majority of it.