Syllabus
Sylabus:
1. The place of Dutch among Indo-European and Germanic languages.
2. Contrastive analysis: Dutch vs. English, German, French.
3. Dutch in the North (Netherlands) and in the South (Flanders). Dutch in the overseas areas (Caribbean, Suriname, Indonesia, South Africa).
4. Phonetic system. Pronunciation vs. spelling.
5. Practice: pronunciation vs. spelling.
6. Grammatical system I.
7. Grammatical system II.
8. Practice: grammatical system.
9. Basic vocabulary. Main characteristics of Dutch words.
10. Vocabulary. Loans from other languages.
11. Practice: reading and listening comprehension I.
12. Practice: reading and listening comprehension II.
13. Practice: reading and listening comprehension III.
Annotation
The subject provides the students with the basic knowledge of Dutch, as a medium-sized European language. The language is characterized especially in a contrastive way: as compared with its three dominant neighbours - German, English and French, the three languages that have influenced it for centuries.
The students get acquainted with the basic pronunciation rules and the grammatical categories. The first familiarization with the vocabulary is conceived to maximize the student´s reading comprehension and ability to deduce the meaning, especially using the knowledge of English and/or German.
This subject is a valuable benefit especially for those studying different kinds of philology, general linguistics, art history, European history, Indonesian studies (Indonesia being a former Dutch colony), political sciences etc.