Inversie, baby, inversie!
Dutch is sooo easy
The only real difficult part of the otherwise sooo easy Dutch language, is the word order. Right?
Of course, you’ll have no problem if you stick to expressing yourself in main sentences.
Subject, verb, the rest. Ik spreek Nederlands.
Easy as pie.
But if you happen to compose a subclause, or if you don’t start your main sentence with the subject, problems are bound to start.
Long story short: it’s the inversion.
Inversion - the reversal of the order of, in this case, the verb and the subject - is the most feared concept in Dutch grammar.
Feared by non-native speakers, that is. For, did you ever hear a Dutch-born parent correct her infant by saying, ‘Inversie, baby, inversie!’?
But as a teacher, I say this to my students all night (without the baby part). So often, in fact, that instead of articulating it verbally, I introduced a gesture by which the student instantly understands: right, inversion!
The gesture is as follows: I raise two fingers of my hand with the hand palm facing my student, so that to her my middle finger is on the left and the index finger is on the right.✌🏼
Then I elegantly turn my raised hand 180 degrees, thus rotating the order of the fingers, so that no longer the middle finger, but the index finger is on the left.
In other words, inversion, baby.
The subject and the verb switch places.
Not: Ooit ik spreek Nederlands. But: Ooit spreek ik Nederlands.
It's an efficient gesture that keeps me from having to constantly interrupt my students, which unwantedly takes the flow out of their discourse. But it does allow them to correct themselves quickly and discreetly.
In fact, it's so efficacious that one night I catch them - from the Syrian Nour to the Spanish Nuria - using it to correct each other, making this simple sign into a fruitful two-way learning tool.
See? Nederlands is zooo makkelijk.
I teach NT2 (Dutch as a second language), mainly to internationals who came to Amsterdam for or with love and intend to stay. The conversations reproduced here were all held in Dutch. For privacy reasons the names are fictitious. Expected early 2025: my bilingual book Nederlands is zooo makkelijk | Dutch is sooo easy.
Talkin’ Lingo
Ooit - one day. Or: ever
Ooit spreek ik Nederlands - one day I’ll speak Dutch
Zooo makkelijk - sooo easy