Customer Reviews

Dutch: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars)

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A couple of years ago, I started learning nederlands. I bought CD's and tapes and learned lots of vocabulary, but had no idea how to put the words together to make a coherent sentence.

This book turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. It explains all of the little nuances with regards to spelling, sentence structure and word usage. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a beginner in the Dutch language.

I recently began studying Dutch in order to communicate better with my Dutch boyfriend, and so I thought this book would be a nice supplement to Stern's short but informative "Essential Dutch Grammar." The book is nicely organized for the complete beginner, starting with a pronunciation section (which actually is pretty vague), then moving into spelling rules and how to form plural nouns, before even getting to sentence structure and verb conjugation. So it is a nice thing to look at if you have never encountered Dutch before.

BUT! This book is loaded with spelling errors that I, with my vocabulary of maybe 50 Dutch words, was able to spot immediately. For example, in a vocabulary list illustrating the spelling rules, it says the Dutch word for reason is "redden". NO it isn't, it's "reden" with only one D. The very next page says the singular AND plural for bicycle is "fietsen", when actually the singular is "fiets" and the just the plural is "fietsen". The scary thing is that those are just the two that I noticed, who knows how many more mistakes there are. They might just be small spelling mistakes, but when you are learning a new language and your study guide has these kinds of errors, it makes you wonder what else is wrong.

Fortunately, though, the rules in general seem to be true, when compared with what Stern's "Grammar" says, so I would still give this book a shot, because it does give a lot of examples of each grammar rule. Just don't use it for a vocabulary source.

I am currently taking a first class in Dutch and using this book as the text. I have found it fine as far a grammar goes, but the organization of vocabulary is terrible. The words are not really grouped according to any theme stronger than a conversation at the end of each chapter. For example the word appel (apple) is found many chapters ahead of the verb eten (to eat). This makes both learning these word lists and carrying on mock conversations quite difficult. I don't know Dutch, but I feel in this respect I could construct a better textbook.

An earlier edition of this book was on my wish list as I began my second school year of Dutch classes after moving to the Netherlands. It's not a simple book! Had I tried to study with it as a total beginner it would have overwhelmed me, I think. And I'm a product of a double-generation school teacher family, so my English grammar isn't too bad.

But for someone with a bit of the Dutch language under their belt and who wants more structure in the language-learning process, this is the book for you. The rules, such as there are in Dutch, are clearly and in great depth laid out.

My copy of Dutch: An Essential Grammar is well used and still has a place of honor on my desk at work. Even my Dutch colleagues ask to use it occasionally!