#7 Struggles of coming from a third world into the first world
Dear steemit friends, having to leave home, family and friends is not the only difficult part about moving to a different country, there are lots of other struggles in day to day life as well. This blog is dedicated to all of those struggles of moving to a first world country.
My struggle began with the language here, "Dutch". I come from Nepal, so I have my own language and script which is totally different to Dutch. But since I am not that bad in English, i thought that learning Dutch will not be that difficult. BOY WAS I WRONG.
After having lived in Holland for a year and a half, I have managed to understand enough Dutch to watch the cheesy soaps in tv but inetracting with people still makes me feel like a really stupid person. There are different provinces in Holland and each province has a different dialect. Within each province, there are different cities and villages and they too have their distinct dialects. So you can imagine that my understanding of thelanguage is pretty limited.
Despite the gazillion dialects, people here can immediately tell if you are a foreigner speaking Dutch. And they immediately switch to english, which is fine if you do not ever want to learn the language here. But I have been trying really really hard to learn the language here, so it got me really frustrated when people did this to me. But, it is still better than when you tell people that you are not really good in the language and they start talking to you as fast as Eminem does while rapping.
So, if you ever decide to learn Dutch, or move to Holland, get here with a lot of patience when it comes to languages. Especially because there are more exceptions than rules when it comes to their grammar.
Yea i totally get it :)
Do you have similar experiences yourself?
I do upto a point i am from nepal and i studied in uk it wasnt so hard per say
Where are you from in Nepal? I am from Kathmandu. And what did you study in UK?
I am from kathmandu and i studied management. What you doing?
I work in a finance department here.
But hey! You can drink the water straight from the tap :P
Haha.
That is true. I mean there are perks to being here, like krokets ;)
That is an interesting take on the challenges of learning a native language - and the natives should appreciate your efforts to do so.
This might seem a bit of a silly suggestion - but maybe you could look up youtube videos in quick-spoken dutch and give it a run-through at reduced speed, to assist with familiarization?
Its not a silly suggestion at all. I am actually following some youtube videos. To learn the language but also the culture. TV helps a lot too. I am doing a lot better now I did than half a year back. :)