My boyfriend is Belgian (Flanders) and I'm planning on living there, however I've found the Dutch language (pronunciation) impossible. Some context, I actually study French and Russian at university in England and have an immense passion for language learning, so complex grammatical structures are my forte. Dutch lacks this complexity in its grammar, but it by far makes up for it in pronunciation. I'm learning German as well at the moment, and have learnt it on and off for about a year and a half, and I find it so incredibly easy, despite it being well known that Dutch should be a lot easier than German. I'm not sure if it's just because I click better with German for no known reason, or whether it's actually just easier on the whole. German pronunciation is clear and natives tend to swallow words a lot less than in Dutch, in which a whole sentence can be completely compressed into one mumbled word. My theory here is that German is easier to comprehend orally after learning the language itself, whereas even after learning something in Dutch, it's not guaranteed that you'll understand what the person is saying. After practicing for hours upon hours to pronounce words in Dutch, it just seems too difficult, and thus it isn't really rewarding to speak, especially when even after I feel like I've pronounced something well, my boyfriend says it was either wrong or sounds extremely foreign. Sure its grammar is pretty simple but is it worth it if I can't even pronounce what I've learnt?
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