From our blog
News, developments and articles from Regina Coeli
Alaaf! The language of Dutch Carnival
Seven weeks before Easter Sunday, Carnival starts in a large part of the Netherlands. Especially in the provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg, life is dominated by this feast for a few days, but Carnival is also celebrated in some places in the eastern part of the country. Carnival means ‘carne vale’: farewell meat. Carnival marks the beginning of a fasting period, although few Carnival-goers still honour that tradition...
Through any kind of weather
Dutch people go by bike to work, school, the pub, the sports club, you name it. And you’ll generally find them cycling through any kind of weather. A heavy downpour doesn’t stop the Dutch (and the expats who have also adopted the habit) from hopping on their bikes. How do they manage?
The power of an intensive training course
Does learning a language quickly also mean forgetting it quickly? If you do it right, it doesn't.
You learn about the culture alongside the language
Even if you speak a language completely correctly when it comes to grammar, the approach you take can often be vastly different to what you might do in your mother tongue. This has everything to do with cultural differences.
How do you make language learning fun?
Do you remember them from secondary school: those lists of German cases, irregular verbs in English or French verb conjugations? It probably helped, but whether it was actually fun memorising all that... Well, it doesn’t have to be that way!
Ten habits to improve in a language
If you speak a foreign language, you’ve surely noticed that it’s “use it or lose it”. That’s why it’s so important to keep up your skills. Perhaps you do use the language regularly, but you’ve noticed that your progress has come to a standstill. You can do something about both of these things. The easiest way is to make language a part of your daily or weekly routine. Start with one of these ten ideas!