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Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ? I'm exactly five weeks into my mission to speak Dutch.
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While there are major advantages of my German and my English
25 Speed Dates in Dutch. Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ? I'm exactly five weeks into my mission to speak Dutch. While there are major advantages of my German and my English giving me a head start thanks to many linguistic similarities, I have had a major set-back in this mission that has been slowing me down tremendously, simply finding opportunities to converse! Dutch culture is different to others I am used to, everyone has been very nice and polite to me, and nobody speaks English to me, but after a brief first conversation they tend to disappear, and there is little hope of seeing them again due to their always packed schedules. They are a bit too organised. Luckily I am finally getting through to some people and starting to socialise properly, hanging out for hours or even almost an entire day, speaking just in Dutch. But for the most part, when I meet people I tend to have a similar first introduction conversation over and over again. This is a terrible way to make progress to be able to discuss many different topics required to be fluent in a language. While I continue to meet people that I can converse more deeply with, I decided to tackle the problem in a unique different way, I need my brief first conversations (which are easy to find) to be unique so I'm discussing something different and improving my language skills in different ways. So I had a crazy idea: Speed dating as a tool for language learning! Speed dating is a relatively new concept, apparently started by Jewish communities in the late 90s to help shy people pair-off. I had only ever seen it on some American TV shows, and not really thought much about it. I wasn't interested in actually finding a date though. I just wanted to get some Dutch practice because they had been notoriously hard to hang out with as friends! You generally don't meet someone up this week for coffee or lunch, you have to propose a time long in advance and understand the Dutch need to be organised, something which contrasts with my preference for spontaneity. Also, Dutch people have their set network of friends and it's turning out to be incredibly hard to break into that. If the majority of my conversations with the Dutch are going to be brief, then I decided to think of a better way to take advantage of these conversations. Speed dating just hit me as the obvious way to test it out, and I found a place that organises it and had a session for 20-35 year olds last night ! It turns out the website (Edit: it's not available anymore) I got it through only accept Dutch bank payments (€32), so I knew it was unlikely I'd find other foreigners there, confirming how useful it would be to get to know locals. I got my flatmate to pay for me, and signed up for what I considered simply an excellent and unique opportunity to practice Dutch with 25 people! To make it more interesting though, I gave myself the challenge that each of my mini dates (lasting only 3-5 minutes) must involve talking about something completely different . (And of course they must be in Dutch). I can't just rattle off the same introduction and ask the same questions or I won't learn anything. I actually had little interest in finding the girl of my dreams (I'm leaving in 3 weeks!) –, the idea of experiencing this speed-dating phenomenon is something I had to try once. I don't have a bucket list (and don't like the idea of listing things months or years in advance to tick off in my life), but speed dating was certainly on my spontaneous f uck-it (why not) list! Doing it in a language I'm not yet fully comfortable in just made it all the more interesting
25 ways to not talk about the weather. I find it incredible when people tell me that they have “,nothing to talk about”, when they find an opportunity to practice a language, and suggest that all you can do is discuss the weather . So, I'll actually tell you exactly what I remember talking about last night. So I arrived, asked the hotel receptionist where the speed-dating was going down and found the hostess explaining how it works. She checked my name against the bookings and gave me my booklet of girls' names. As you can imagine, she was certainly not speaking slowly for the benefit of foreigners! But I managed to understand most of it. She pointed out the tables, shown in the photo above, and said that the girls will stay in the same place they are assigned and each time the bell rings, the guys will move up a table. speed dating under 25