Now is the perfect time to improve your mastery of Dutch! Books will help you. Here is a book that can help you to go beyond A2! It’s a children’s book, but it is fun, exciting, playful and if you take it seriously you can learn scores of new words.
The title of the book is Alfabet and except for the title it has no words… The author and illustrator is Charlotte Dematons, well know for wonderful books like De gele ballon (the yellow balloon), Sinterklaas (Sint Nicolaas) and Nederland (Netherlands).
No words, so how can you learn new vocabulary?
I’ll explain. The book hides over 3000 words. It’s your task to find them. Alfabet consists of 26 paintings. One for each letter of the alphabet. So the first illustration is dedicated to the letter A. Each object in the picture is a word that starts with the letter A. So on the large mountain (Ararat) you’ll find Noah’s Ark. You’ll see an ‘aap’, an ‘alligator’, an ‘astronaut’, an ‘ambulance’, an ‘aardappel’ and so on. The name of each object must have an ‘A’.
And when you turn the page, you’ll see that all these objects have names beginning with a ‘b’: ‘beer’, ‘bongo’, ‘broccoli’, ‘boog’ (bow), ‘boemerang’, etc. And so on and so forth, letter after letter until you reach ‘Z’.
It’s fun to do this research by yourself, but is even ‘gezelliger’ if you do it with your partner or with a child or several children. Write these words down, and don’t forget to check in a dictionary if the word is ‘de’ or ‘het’. Before you know it, you’ll have picked up loads of words and you have made your word treasury (woordenschat) richer.
If you want some help, there is an internet site attached to the book, but I know you…. You’ll want to explore these wonderful paintings yourself.
Find the words in this image starting with ‘H’
Below you see one of the many fantastic drawings that Charlotte Dematons made for the book ‘Alfabet’. Which Dutch words do you recognize in this illustration that start with ‘H’? The contest is closed but it’s still a fun game to do (alone, or with family and friends)!
Competition is closed! Send your answers to info@directdutch.com. He or she who has the most right answers will be rewarder with a copy of ‘Alfabet’! The contest runs from October 27 – November 5 and the winner will be contacted after the competition ends.
