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Comment by Rainymood | Hacker News Reader

>2. No one will put up with your shitty language skills for more than 5 minutes... Except your significant other. They'll have the patience because they love you. Everyone else will just cringe after a few minutes and change to English, or just smile and wave you off.

This is actually not true. As a Dutch person I have huge respect and admiration for people that are learning dutch and willing to practice with me no matter how cringy it is. Exactly the cringe is how you learn! I have a friend with whom I can hold a full-blown conversation in Dutch and I'm honestly in awe, he's a PhD student and took on the liberty of learning Dutch whilst many PhD students that are here from foreign countries (i.e. will be here for 5 years) never even make the effort. The effort alone should be highly commended.

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You're a rare exception, then. Every single person I know who has tried to learn Dutch has expressed frustration that the Dutch, more even than many (most?) other European countries, will immediately switch to English if they notice you're not fluent.

EDIT: That said, I do agree that if you get past a certain level of fluency it might be easier. And I suppose it depends on where you live. Cities are probably harder.

Similarly, Dutch people don't try to talk to Afrikaans people, they also switch to English.

There are exceptions when there are vested interests.

There are a lot of variables, but one thing to keep in mind is that when people switch from $language to English, a subset of them may simply see the conversation as their chance to practice English (rather than as your chance to practice $language).

The problem with Dutch people is that their English is, all else being equal, unusually good compared to at least most of mainland Europe.

So whatever the variable (city/rural, expat/local, etc.), you're very likely to run into a Dutch person who is fluent in English, and usually fluent enough where it's not even a matter of 'a chance of practice' for them, just a matter of avoiding mutual frustration.

At least when you're talking to someone who wants to practice, there's a chance they'd still prefer or revert to their own language. With lots of Dutch people that's not an issue.

Pro tip froma friend who was learning Dutch: if you open every conversation with "I'm learning Dutch, so I'm going to try speak only Dutch" (in Dutch), people are more inclined to help.

You may have the patience but I do suspect that the majority of people doesn’t.

I also don’t think it is necessarily about respect or admiration. In day to day interactions, people just prefer to use the most efficient means available to understand and be understood. Like using English instead of a clumsy beginners level of Spanish.

>I also don’t think it is necessarily about respect or admiration. In day to day interactions, people just prefer to use the most efficient means available to understand and be understood. Like using English instead of a clumsy beginners level of Spanish.

Of course, but I can guarantee you that, at least for Dutch people, we have huge admiration for people trying to learn our language. Dutch is hard and the effort is appreciated, it shows a certain kind of respect towards the country and its people.

I can guarantee you that if someone at the counter gives the receipt and a foreigner replies with "Ja, graag" in a thick heavy accent she will be greeted with a smile.

I think that we switch over to English and the easy more default setting way too easily, this makes it hard for people to learn the native language because no one wants to practice with them.

Irrelevant tangent: I was in Albert Heijn (common Dutch supermarket) today, the one in Amsterdam at Dam Square. They recently sell "Danish Chef Cheese Spread" (you might imagine Cheez Whiz in a tube), which I'm addicted to, to the detriment of my health. As I was stuffing tubes of this into my basket, a pretty young Chinese woman (tourist) stood right beside me and said something in Chinese. It took me a few seconds to realize she'd spoken Chinese and couldn't care less if I existed. It so happens that, at the risk of humble-bragging, I've taken some Chinese lessons. Ten more seconds later, I understood what she'd said: zhe shi shenme? "What is this?" She had no idea what this bin of cheese tubes was, and why would she? I then spent another half-minute trying to think of the word for "cheese" in Chinese. Of course, I was too late, and she re-joined several other attractive Chinese people. Google translate says Qǐ sī (chee suh), but is that possibly the actual translation? I may never know.

My experience in the Netherlands matches what you are saying. My Dutch is barely enough to hold a casual conversation with a colleague, and I do make a lot of mistakes. But people do keep up with me, and I had multiple job offers after doing the interviews entirely in Dutch.

After you reach a certain level people tend to be forgiving.

My oddest experience when learning Dutch was standing in line at the Post Office and hearing the woman berating the non-Dutch people in the queue in front of me for not learning Dutch. Then when I got to the front and asked for postzegels in OK Dutch, she replied immediately in English..., I told her she was a hypocrite...

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