get to know the lingo

I am still learning Dutch with the aim of being fluent. I’ve been at it for almost two years now through a combination of classroom learning, online and immersion. There are two online platforms to choose from:  memrise and Duolingo. I have finished all the 7 levels that Memrise give and I am halfway through the DuoLingo material

Memrise will give you enough words and expressions to survive shopping, eating out, reading adverts and so on. You will quickly learn expressions beyond ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with a significant amount of ‘wow’ factor. But you won’t know much Dutch, at best you will know enough to…’get the gist of it’. In other words Memrise on its own won’t give you fluency.

I’ve started learning through Duolingo at about the same time I started using Memrise. At first I was put off by the pictures teaching me how to say egg, mouse, boy, girl etc…. Rosetta Stone style, while with Memrise I already knew things like: “Mag Ik de rekening, alstublieft”; “Bent u klaar om te bestellen”…. etc. However as I’ve exhausted Memrise I went back to Duolingo to further my quest for Dutch fluency. I found a much improved platform in both design, content and functionality. Having completed half way of the Dutch content, I find that it takes the learning to a higher level than possible with Memrise.

So that’s about it. This my sound like a advert for Duolingo, but I can see how Memrise it is still useful, as long as the expectations remain realistic.