Home, family, and friends

Home and Daily Routine

In Dutch, a house is referred to as a huis and apartment as an appartement.
The different rooms are called different names such as the woonkamer (living room), keuken (kitchen), slaapkamer (bedroom), and badkamer (bathroom).
Daily chores can include stofzuigen (vacuuming), afwassen (washing dishes), or koken (cooking).
Talking about your daily routine, you might say ik sta op om zeven uur (I get up at seven o’clock), ik ga naar bed om tien uur (I go to bed at ten o’clock) or ik ga naar school om acht uur (I go to school at eight o’clock).

Family and Friends

Dutch for family and friends are gezin and vrienden respectively.
In the family, the mother is moeder and father is vader. Sister and brother are referred to as zus and broer.
When referring to friends, you could use the phrase mijn vriend or mijn vriendin for ‘my friend’, depending on the gender of the friend.
You can talk about friendship with phrases like wij zijn goede vrienden (we are good friends) or ik hou van mijn vrienden (I love my friends).

Travelling and Holidays

When speaking about countries, the word used in Dutch is landen. For example, Nederland is the Netherlands, België refers to Belgium, and Duitsland is Germany.
To talk about going on holiday, you can say ik ga op vakantie naar… (I am going on holiday to…).
Different means of transport include de auto (the car), de trein (the train), het vliegtuig (the airplane).
You can discuss the weather while travelling, using phrases like het is warm (it is hot), het is koud (it’s cold), or het regent (it is raining).

Reminders: Variety of verbs such as ‘gaan’ (to go), ‘komen’ (to come), ‘zien’ (to see) etc. can be practiced within these topics to improve the sentence structures and thereby, allow the learners to develop proficiency in Dutch. Also, remember to incorporate the appropriate pronouns and conjunctions while framing sentences.