I’m learning Dutch for my girlfriend and because I plan to move there but I was wondering…do they have any worthwhile literature to check out?
As an aside I dislike the language, but I do it for she
Im learning Dutch for my girlfriend and because I plan to move there but I was wonderingdo they have any worthwhile literature to check out?
Just read the Statenvertaling to learn Dutch.
Read Max Havelaar if you are interested in literature.
She isn't real, moron. It was me all along.
>do they have any worthwhile literature to check out?
I mean, are you actually going to learn the language well enough to read, understand and enjoy classic lit? That's gonna take years, my dude. The Dutch-Iranian writer Kader Abdolah, supposedly learned the language later in life by starting with children's lit and working his way up. Is that something you're willing to do?
You could also read a translation, but then what's even the point? If you wanted to share your girlfriends interest in Dutch lit, you wouldn't have to ask here, so I'm assuming it isn't one of her interests.
Is there worthwhile lit from the Netherlands? Yes of course. Is it worth learning the language over? Nope. I'm going to learn the language anyways, will there be books I could enjoy? Yeah, if you look for them. But you'll probably never get to the point you can read classic lit anyways. Perhaps modern lit.
Congratulations on creating the most useless post on this entire board. Just list some books.
Learning a language isn't that hard, it takes 1-2 years of daily practice tops.
Found the American.
dutch is almost english, mongrel
More like some unholy mixture of german and english
It doesn't matter considering that fricktard compared against an iranian of course they have a harder time since they are coming from a different base language
Amsterdam Stories by Nescio.
They do but seeing as you dislike the language you will not enjoy it. Just keep reading lit you already enjoy.
here you go op
>I’m learning Dutch for my girlfriend
Why there be so many Dutch women?
Don’t give a frick about your moronic blogpost
Dat voel wanneer Nederlander
Vraag je antwoorden
Eoin?
>Hitler dood, wat nou?
>legit front page article in a dutch newspaper
my german ass just cant take this moronic excuse for a language seriously....
The newspaper was Afrikaans though
oooooh sorry how could I have confused dutch with Black person dutch ..... everybody knows they're two completely different languages after all my bad
German is just a less sophisticated Dutch.
>I moved to the Netherlands for a year last year
go back were full
>German is just a less sophisticated Dutch.
But muh naamvallen
you can always larp and still use them
Dutch is NOT respectable without a mit nach nebst nächst samt bei seit von zu zuwider entgegen ausser aus to memorize
ehm sweaty, some of those are wechselprapos and not dativ exclusive, you should memorize wechel and dativ-only separately
I plagiarized them from Doe Maar - De bom (1983)
kino. Leddit Gold for you good sir.
CARRIERE MAKEN
>go back were full
I don't think anybody asked what you thought about it.
my country I get to say
don't like it you know where the door is
>my country I get to say
You do?
I thought people here could read
Koopgoot
I moved to the Netherlands for a year last year. My girlfriend is also Dutch. I arrived with no knowledge of Dutch and left with a decent-ish grasp of the language. I am not great, but I can have conversations, hold down basic jobs, read most things, etc. in Dutch. Relative to their size, there is a lot of Dutch (and Flemish) literature. They have lots of great regional newspapers, for example, and a very healthy publishing industry.
Here are some books I recommend:
Anton de Kom - Anangsieh tories. These are folk stories from West Africa that survived the slave trade and were re-told/transmitted in oral form during the colonial times in Suriname.
Jan Siebelink - Knielen op een bed violen. About a nice yet passive ("zachtaardig") father who runs a failing flower business. After a religious experience in the field, he becomes a religious fundamentalist (based on a rather obscure sect of Dutch calvinists who refuse to go to church and stay at home reading the bible obsessively). His writing style is like a 20th century mini-revival of the symbolist/decadent movement in France/The Lowlands.
Gerard Reve - De avonden. I haven't actually read this, but it's considered a very important piece of Dutch literature. Set in the days before Christmas, it follows a solipsistic, tormented person as he goes about trying to find meaning in his life. "Het was gezien. Het was niet onopgemerkt gebleven" is the most famous line in Dutch literature.
Gerbrand Bakker - Boven is het stil. A book about loneliness and repression in the Dutch countryside, a classic subject. The protagonist has patiently kept his family farm going. When his father begins to go senile, he moves him upstairs, and begins to take control of his own life. It has a very memorable opening. I don't have the Dutch version in front of me, but in English it goes something like: "I’ve just put Father upstairs. I had to put him on a chair first in order to take the bed apart. He sat there like a calf that’s just a couple of minutes old, before it’s been licked clean: with a directionless, wobbly head and eyes that drift over things." This is my favourite Dutch book so far.
Lize Spit - Het smelt. Pretty recent Belgian book. It's a literary thriller about a woman who returns to her hometown for a party with a massive block of ice in her boot. It's not clear why, but as the two narrative threads slowly reveal, she is there to take revenge for something that happened in her childhood. Very slow paced, but full of lots of late 90s/early 2000s nostalgia. Spit has a very charming, perceptive style ofw riting.
Tommy Wieringa - Joe Speedboot. I personally never got into this guy, but a lot of people read him at school and like him. He has an easy, accessible, fast-paced style.
For the solipsism of De Avonden you should note that the protagonist is 23 years old, two years after the war, and lives with his parents.
Somebody remarked that it's so monotonous that you could take out all the odd-numbered chapters without removing anything essential.
I really liked it.
Assuming this isn't a shitpost:
>Max Havelaar: 19th century classic about Indonesian plantation exploitation - the SJW tome of its time
>Van de Koele Meren Des Doods: late 19th century but very modern feeling psychological novel
>De Kleine Johannes: allegorical story about empiricism vs romanticism
>Titaantjes: story about interwoven lives and conformity - other Nescio stories are also good
>Eline Vere: doomer bougie story - Couperus was a pretty important writer in the early 20th century but has become less relevant since and his style will be difficult to read for non-natives
>Op Afbetaling: mid-tier psychological novel about lawyer whose live falls apart, vaguely Hitchwiener-like. Vestdijk wrote tons of novels but none of them spectacular
>De Avonden: the classic of classics, describes it pretty well. Reve became a nutjob in later life and not all his later novels are as good
>De Aanslag: Mulisch book #1, about the fallout of a traumatic event in world war 2
>Het Stenen Bruidsbed: Mulisch book #2: about the fallout of a traumatic event in world war 2
>Ontdekking van de hemel: Mulisch book #3: schizo maximalist novel, considered (erroneously) the best thing written in Dutch in the 20th century
>Ontdekking van Moskou: Mulisch book #4: pomo thing about scholars bickering about a historical text, pretty fun
>De Donkere Kamer van Damokles: somewhat schizo world war 2 resistance shenanigans
>Nooit Meer Slapen: student does self-discovery while on an arctic expedition that goes wrong
>Karakter: man has complex relation with his father
>Herschenschimmen: man develops dementia
>Het Huis van de moskee: about the Islamic revolution in Iran
There's also some Belgian dutch writers worth reading:
>Elsschot: everything he ever wrote (Villa Des Roses, Kaas, Lijmen/Het Been, Tsjip/De Leeuwentemmer) (fairly simple and polished style, might also be good for a beginner)
>Timmermans: Pallieter, Boerenpsalm
>Walschap: Hautekiet, Een Mens Van Goede Wil
>Streuvels: Leven En Dood In Den Ast, De Vlasschaard (Warning: Streuvels writes in a West Flemish dialect, so there's a lot of vocab in here that's not Standard Dutch)
>Claus: Omtrent Deedee, Het Verdriet Van Belgie(very famous novel that has nobody in Belgium has read)
>Louis Paul Boon: Pieter Daens, De Kappelekensbaan(actually the best thing written in Dutch in the 20th century, but will be very difficult for non-native speaker) - if you can find a collection of his newspaper columns, these are also great
>Geeraerts: this guy really liked colonizing Africa but he wrote short and easy to read stories that are pretty decent (would be Insta-cancelled if SJWs could read Dutch however)
Thank you anon. Right now I am where you were a year ago (minus the Dutch girlfriend) so your recommendations are appreciated.
I cannot read anything longer than a few sentences for now, but it's nice to have something to look forward, to stay motivated.
Imagine not being able to read in at least 2 languages...
Yes. Menno Simons if you wanna learn about the Amish.
I was gonna say Tintin, but that's from white NL
read windmill and waterworks manuals. everything else is for gays (that is, non dutch) “people”.
Opkankeren, we zitten vol.
Read Gerard Reve first and then Wessel te Gussinklo, OP
Ik ook
>for she
As Batavus Droogstoppel teaches us, the only true Dutch literature is the Bible and stock earning reports.
Even tiny European languages like Norwegian, Portuguese and Welsh have a greater literature than Dutch. Why is a mystery to me, but there you go.
Dutch is the most beautiful language on this continent
>I dislike the language
why?
https://www.jeugdbibliotheek.nl/12-18-jaar/lezen-voor-de-lijst/15-18-jaar/alle-boeken.html
filter by level 4-6. Or filter by year and do 50 years and older
jij sneed mij af
There are countries with actual literature - England, France, Germany, Italy - and countries with canons established by middle class fricks in the 19th and 20th century who needed intellectual predecessors to justify themselves, with talent or quality being more of an afterthought. Dutch literature obviously belongs to the latter category.
t. seething contrarian, blindly copying the opinion of other IQfyizens. Has likely read not a single Dutch work of literature. Certainly hasn't read any in Dutch itself.
muh dutch early modern theater and theology works
Van Lodenstein has some beautiful sermons
>countries with canons established by middle class fricks in the 19th and 20th century who needed intellectual predecessors to justify themselves, with talent or quality being more of an afterthought
You just described Germany
Who from the German canon do you think falls into this category?
I'd say you're correct regarding the assessment of post-enlightenment german literature, but figures like Hölderlin and Vogelweide redeem the german canon for me.
>learning the single ugliest European language with one of the puniest literary corpora in the world solely to impress some lanky herring stank hole
The Dutch have the best swear words.
Do it for John O'Mill
Danish?
>learning the single ugliest European language
OP didn't mention polish
Not really Europeans
op didn't say british english
BELCHIË EINDBAAS FLAAMSE FRIETJES SEIJN FET LECKER
de walvissen in de oceaan
horen Godes stemme aan
als de potvis in de pot pist, zit de pot vol potvissen pis
potvissenpis schrijf je aaneen, angloïde droplul
Harry Potvissenpis