Can you tell from the title that I am obsessed with alliteration LOL? 😉

Anyway you may have realized by now that I have been including some [] with a lowercase ‘d’ and some interesting looking words that are definitely not English. If you follow my Instagram then you notice that I have in my little profile description that I am a language learner. And truthfully, I haven’t been doing a very good job at upholding that moniker. So I decided to include some posts about my experiences as an aspiring polyglot.

I previously alternated between learning Spanish and French while I was in school. But at that time, learning a foreign language was deemed kind of useless. So I didn’t focus as much as I should have.

I know, all of my non-American friends are probably cringing, writhing, and grumbling their disdain for this type of mindset that we have as Americans.

All I can say is: I am sorry [d: Het spijt me]. And you are the reason that I seek to amend this later in my life.

I have met some really amazing people from different parts of the world, who speak English [d: Engels], but are also fluent in other languages. As a result, I wanted a way to communicate with them in their native languages. Well, maybe not fluently, but at least include some expressions or words in their native language to show them that I care. After all, they tolerate speaking to me in English, so I figure it’s the least I can do.

(Not only that, but as an American in business, it can be extremely useful to be able to navigate another language outside of English. Especially if your company has plans on going global.)

So right now, I have two Belgian friends [d: twee Belgische vrienden–probably messed up the gender/plurality, so please correct me if one of you is reading this] who hail from the Dutch speaking part of Belgium (Flanders) and I am visiting one of them (for sure, maybe meeting up with the second one) next May. So I figured there is no time like the present to at least familiarize myself with the language.

This won’t become a language blog exclusively, and I am not sure if I will write any feature length posts about learning Dutch. I am by no means an expert, and I definitely won’t pretend to be. I merely wanted to explain why you might be seeing more Dutch included in my posts alongside the English. And maybe (if I do become brave enough to write posts exclusively about my language learning experiences) use this blog as another way to stay on track with my language learning. 🙂

Until next time, friends [d: tot de volgende keer, vrienden]!