[Course Forum] Dutch - The 1,001 Most Common Words

Community-Created Courses Dutch
21

I uploaded thousands of audio files for the Swedish courses, so I can also check out if there are some better audio files on forvo.com or elsewhere and upload new ones. There were a couple of other words that could do with new audio files, so I would be happy to do that as I come across them.

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It’s difficult to change the audio - all the audio is provided by native speakers. However I may be in Holland in the next month and can do it then. I live in England

I’ll sort out “weg” this week.

Thanks for the offer of help.

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I used forvo - the online pronouncing dictionary - for a lot of the words on the 8K+ Most Common Swedish Words and it was relatively straightforward to do. I have an account there and it’s really no big deal to download a file to my Chromebook and then upload it to memrise. I have already done this about four thousand times, LOL.

Are you British, by the way?

I am, but I live in Germany. I was on holiday in Amsterdam last summer and it made me curious about learning Dutch, which has been a lifelong dream of mine, believe it or not!

24

Fantastic! Sorting out the audio would be just great!

Diana (V75)

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25

Yes, I’m a brit living in Yorkshire but I sail in The Netherlands… and my boatyard doesn’t really speak English!

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26

I have an aunt who lives in West Yorkshire who spends the summer on the canals. She is about 70 now, but she loves living on her boat!

And I will happily work on the audio, you just need to go into the database and add me as a contributor and I can get to work right away :slight_smile:

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You’re added.

Mine’s a sailing boat - but small! See my profile pic!!

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28

Oh and thank you!

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29

Weg… this will get sorted out when you add the parts of speech!

THE road appears as DE weg!

All the nouns should have THE in front of them.

This was one of the major developments made when the course was taken over by Daftshadow.

30

Well, there are still tons of english without “the”, some dutch singles without “de/het” (keer, dag, moeite) and one or two plurals with “de” in front (de dames). Most of the words would accept both, but some won’t.

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31

Thanks for the info, I’ll see what I can do!

32

@V75 / Diana, @VictorAgababov

Next to the word “bang” in Level 6, it says “fixed” is a similar word. Can this be right? I haven’t done much research, but so far I have only found that “fixed” is an English word, not a Dutch one.

Victor? You seem quite busy on this course, do you have any idea?

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Bang is entered as afraid on the data base in level 6 Not sure what the problem is?

Let me know

Diana

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Oops. I see what you mean. I didn’t do the synonyms for this course (Awrrorh and I divided the first and second thousand words between us).

This is clearly a slip-up. I have delated it.

Diana

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35

I wasn’t clear in my comment about articles. What I should have said was that we added the DUTCH article to the first and second thousand courses.

But as the original course creator and Daft Shadow (who followed her) both felt the courses should be open to people who wanted only a little Dutch, the English articles were not added. But the Dutch without the article was added as an alternative acceptable answer. It seems to have worked OK, as this has never been raised before.

However, the fact that it hasn’t been raised before is not a reason for failing to reflect on the issue now you have raised it.

And I see where you are coming from.

So I have added “the” before the English nouns to make it clear that this is the preferred answer mode. But I have also sampled the nouns and have found all the alternatives (without articles) are in place. (And we have never had “complaints” about this latter) And as all plurals are De, there is no real need to add these. Of course, if there are gaps, they should and will be filled.

I have also put an explanatory note in the introduction to the course . Not everyone wants to extend their Dutch, so it is good to make clear that this beginners course can work for those who are not over worried about getting the article right.

I started working with Daft Show back in 2013 when there was nothing similar around. He had taken over a course with many problems and a team of us worked to pull it together and now it has a huge following.

But if the Memrise Dutch courses had been around when my Dutch was at beginner stage, that is what I would have done. And I say this even though I curate this course, as well as the two thousand and the five thousand courses.

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36

Sure there’s no need to add “de” in front of plurals, hence I called out the one that does have for some reason and needs to be cleaned out.
And, on the contrary, some singular nouns that have no de/het in front should have the article added.

Another thing that irks me from time to time is “left”, should be “left (direction)” (vs “i have left”). :wink:

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That’s understandable! A clarification would be helpful, I agree.

Can you see to this, @V75?

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I am just starting this course and will look out for this problem, OK?

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Which course is this, Diana?

40

All past participles have a subject attached. More than 27k people have grasped this! So as “left” doesn’t have one, it’s not a verb.

We have tried to put as little as possible on the card as we can. To keep it clean and easy to learn from. It also helps for speed tests. That was a conscious decision.

In any event, this will be sorted still further when you have put the parts of speech in!

So I’m reluctant to - but I’ll think about it.

I should say we have had remarkably few queries since the course settled down - and the course is very popular. (And when the course HAD problems we were inundated with queries).