Customer Reviews

Hugo Language Course: Dutch In Three Months

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this system 7 years ago to learn some dutch before a trip to the NL to see my dutch boyfriend. Using the tapes in the car and in a walkman, and working with the book for a few hours each week, I was able in say, 5 months to learn a surprising amount of dutch. More importantly, this book got me excited about learning dutch, and made me feel like I could.

I have since investigated and used pretty much every book/system/program on the market for beginners and more advanced students and am still most partial to 'Dutch In Three Months'. It's also quite reasonably priced compared to some other systems. I still get the book out every so often and revise some of the exercises to practice the basics.

I agree with the other reviewers that "dutch in 3 months" is a silly, inaccurate title -- to really learn will take longer, so don't get frustrated. I also recommend "Taking Dutch Further" by the same author for more advanced study. Anyway, it must have worked because I married that Dutchman!

This is an excellent book. I must warn buyers that they would need to spend at least 3 hours per day studying to really keep up with learning a chapter per week if they want to learn quickly. I would really suggest that you skip the cassette and find someone who is a native Dutch speaker to assist you. Hugo really does a great job with these books. I used his "Russian in three months" and was able to live in a Russian speaking country quite easily after studying his book. Anyway, if a person is serious about learning Dutch, this is a good book. Another word of advice, writing and re-writing the vocabulary and exercises plus actually using the language will keep the vast amount of information retained easier.

You can't really learn Dutch in 3 months but this is the best book on the market to get started with. It gives all the fundemental stuff you need to know to write and speak in dutch. You must have other learning tools for understanding spoken dutch by a native speaker. Such as audio cassettes or a professor of some sort to practice with. It is tough to learn written dutch as it is but it is even tougher to understand it at conversation speed. This book is a first step and vital tool for this process.

Being an American who has recently moved to Holland, I have searched & searched for the best self-study Dutch language course. I have yet to find it, even here in Holland. I purchased the Dutch in Three Months before I left America and so far, it seems to be the best program. It gives a good vocabulary base (although some words just are not used here, & they can be a bit outdated), it gives a very basic knowledge of the very difficult grammer, and exercises with some translation that are very helpful. Overall, this program is good, except that it could have been more in-depth. It could have offered more Grammer exercises along with the translations. If you are wanting a basic knowledge of Dutch, this is a good 'getting started' program to have. Although it is a MUST to have the audio tapes that go with it. Dutch pronounciation is very different than English.

While this is the best Dutch course currently available, it could easily be topped. The Pimsleur method is far superior, but currently is unavailable in Dutch. The Foreign Service Institute produces much better tapes and books than Hugo, but again, they are more expensive and not available in Dutch anyway.

So, what the student of Dutch is left with is a choice between three or four books and tape courses. The Hugo system worked fine for me, or I should say, I worked hard to master it. This then is the real key to learning: effort. Spend several hours, maybe two, per day, on this couse. Immerse yourself in the language by thinking and talking to yourself in Dutch. Dedicate youself to it, and you will overcome any shortcomings in the book.

The title is a misnomer. It took me about a year to get through it, but it was worth it. It is a well-paced, well-designed course. You should also get the cassette version, which is quite good.

As a beginner I was looking for a course which would help me start speaking the language. I think I found it. The dialogs and exercises are very well chosen to give the student a good understanding of the structures most commonly used in Dutch. The tapes are of a very good quality. So, what else does one need to start learning the language?

As I near the completion of this book/tape course, I feel that I can write a decent review on the product. I was very impressed with the first several sections of the book. Each chapter offered several clear explainations of grammar and structure, and a nice amount of translating exercises were featured at the end of the unit, so that one is able to review the techniques and vocabulary which he or she learned throughout the chapter. There is also a short vocabulary list at the end of each chapter. I feel that I have easily gained a nice knowledge of Dutch vocabulary by working my way through the various chapters. The book also has a short reading/listening "conversation" at the end of each unit. This exercise is supposed to provide the user with some colloqialisms, although I found them to be rather limited. However, the stories are very amusing, and they kept me entertained while working through the book. Three other good points about the book are as follows: The book has a list of grammatical terms and definitions in the back of the book, the book is accompanied by tapes, and a few short readings are also used to conclude the book. The readings are a nice way to show the user that he or she actually learned a lot of Dutch in a short amount of time, and the tapes easily help one improve his or her pronunciation and listening comprehension. The grammer terms are also nice, if someone needs to brush up on his or her English grammar while learning a concept in Dutch.

Although I feel this is a solid product (especially for the price), I find it has a few minor flaws. If it was possible, I would have rated this product 3 1/2 stars as opposed to 4. First of all, I found some of the vocabulary translations to be a bit strange. Maybe it is because this book was printed in London, but for an American, translations such as "settee" and "down at heel" left me surprised and guessing. I also found some of the words to be strange choices for an introductory course in Dutch (i.e. telephonist, wig, etc), words which I will not use for a long time in Dutch. The two things which bother me most about this package, however, become more apparent as I progressed closer to the back of the book. I felt that some of the chapters could have been organized better (why not include all grammatical structures relating to adjectives in one section as opposed to having one chapter focus mainly on adjectives, while another chapter contains one or two small grammatical notes about adjectives while focusing on an entirely different subject?). I also felt that some of the grammatical explainations were weak towards the end of the book. There were a few topics which seem to have been glossed over, which I will be reading about in a different book, since Hugo's course dropped the ball.

As a student of German for three years, who decided to pick up Dutch through self study, I was able to work through most of the book in two or three weeks, without any trouble. As the book is titled "Dutch in Three Months," I believe this sort of goal is reasonable and obtainable for someone who is starting without any sort of leg up, but at the same time, the book will not have one conducting political conversations in Dutch either. However, one would have a knowledge of the basic Dutch grammar structure, as well as a limited but nice amount of vocabulary, so that he or she could hold basic conversations about every day situations. Overall, this package is a good value for the money.

It is more grammatical. It can help as a reference and it is simple, but if you want to learn the language to live in a country who's language is Nederlands (Dutch), then don't buy this as your priority book... only as a simple reference book it is ok.

A sound grammatically based introduction to Dutch which I have found invaluable, since I have studied three other European languages using a grammatically based approach. Each chapter introduces the "next step" grammatically, and also throws in huge amounts of everyday Dutch. If you have a knowledge of German, you'll find Dutch has huge similarities, apart from the devilish pronunciation of course. Probably the hardest language to pronounce that I've ever encountered. But Jan Fenoulhet does an excellent job. ( And for those who never mastered grammar at school, don't be deterred. You can make up a lot of ground from using this book. )

The book is accompanied by CDs which are audio versions of the exercises, drills, and conversations of every chapter in the book. I've ripped these from the CD to my computer, and split them up individually, then burned them onto a CD for the car. This is brilliant, since you can set a car stereo CD to "repeat track", and really get the language imprinted in you mind.

The MP3 originals I've copied to my MP3 player for use in other circumstances.