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Dutch Short Stories for Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Dutch & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way!
Finding PROPER reading material that they can handle…which is precisely the reason we’ve written this book! Teachers love giving out tough, expert-level literature to their students. Books that present many new problems to the reader and force them to search for words in a dictionary every five minutes — it’s not entertaining, useful or motivating for the student at all, and many soon give up on learning at all! In this book, we have compiled 20 easy-to-read, compelling and fun stories that will allow you to expand your vocabulary and give you the tools to improve your grasp of the beautiful Dutch tongue. How Dutch Short Stories for Beginners We want you to feel comfortable while learning the tongue; after all, no language should be a barrier for you to travel around the world and expand your social circles! So look no further! Pick up your copy of Dutch Short Stories for Beginners and start learning Dutch right now !
212 pages, Paperback
Published July 9, 2020
165 people are currently reading
126 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 29, 2020
The title is a little misleading. If you're an advanced beginner or intermediate learner, then this reader shouldn't present much of a problem. Otherwise, you're going to have a hard time. For the sake of full disclosure, I completed the Dutch tree in Duolingo, do daily quizzing in Clozemaster and am proficient in German. It was just challenging enough, wasn't daunting, and I certainly needed the extra vocabulary. If there's a comparable reader for Dutch out there right now, I haven't come across it, so I was glad to find this one.
Some other minor qualms: The vocabulary is a little esoteric in places. I'm not a farmer. I'll never be a farmer. The instances when I'll ever need the verb "to foal" in Dutch (or English for that matter) are nil. And help me if I should ever have to talk to a Dutch person about a "stool sample"!
Additionally, some of the highlighted words are not actually found in the glossaries, but a little extra looking up isn't really a problem.
Some other minor qualms: The vocabulary is a little esoteric in places. I'm not a farmer. I'll never be a farmer. The instances when I'll ever need the verb "to foal" in Dutch (or English for that matter) are nil. And help me if I should ever have to talk to a Dutch person about a "stool sample"!
Additionally, some of the highlighted words are not actually found in the glossaries, but a little extra looking up isn't really a problem.
December 31, 2023
The book has served its purpose of helping me get more familiar with reading in Dutch, for which it has earned the two stars. The vocabulary list at the end of each story with the bold printed words in the text was very helpful most of the time. However, in some chapters, there are words printed in bold for which the entry in the vocabulary list is missing, which was pretty disappointing.
The stories themselves aren’t really great, though. Some of them were interesting or fun but most weren’t really engaging or just very unrealistic. I understand that it’s difficult to write really engaging stories with vocabulary and grammar for beginners, so that was kind of to be expected. My problem is that some of the stories have some rather questionable themes. One story downplays sexual harassment in the workplace, another ridicules modern strategies for raising children and yet another one presents bullying someone back instead of seeking a conversation as the solution for the person‘s ill treatment of colleagues.
I didn’t get this book with the expectation to read the most meaningful and emotional stories I’ve ever read but I would’ve expected them to be more sensitive towards such topics, especially since the book isn’t very old.
The stories themselves aren’t really great, though. Some of them were interesting or fun but most weren’t really engaging or just very unrealistic. I understand that it’s difficult to write really engaging stories with vocabulary and grammar for beginners, so that was kind of to be expected. My problem is that some of the stories have some rather questionable themes. One story downplays sexual harassment in the workplace, another ridicules modern strategies for raising children and yet another one presents bullying someone back instead of seeking a conversation as the solution for the person‘s ill treatment of colleagues.
I didn’t get this book with the expectation to read the most meaningful and emotional stories I’ve ever read but I would’ve expected them to be more sensitive towards such topics, especially since the book isn’t very old.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2024
Twintig korte verhalen die over verschillende onderwerpen gaan. Niks te spannend maar dit boek heeft één eigenschap dat het interessant maakt. Tussen deze bladzijden zitten verhalen met best ingewikkelde zinnen (qua zinsbouw). De zinnen in dit boek zijn lang en bestaan uit meerdere hoofdzinnen en bijzinnen. Dus is dit boek niet zo geschikt voor echte beginners. Het is meer intermediair. De woordenschat is niet té moeilijk maar wel een uitdaging for een leerling. Dit boek was leuk om te lezen naast en vergeleken met andere eenvoudigere boeken en dus hebben een goede paar gemaakt - heel nuttig. Echt een aanrader!
August 11, 2020
I've been looking for a good Dutch resource for expanding my vocabulary. This book helped me a lot with its entertaining stories.
August 7, 2020
Decent Book, One Flaw
This book had some pluses and minuses. I liked that it has interesting stories where something actually happens to a character or group of people. The bolded words that would then be in the vocabulary list is a nice touch. I wasn't wild about the summaries that are in both Dutch and English. The Dutch one is fine, as it adds a little more practice with the language. I would have loved to have seen the English version not be a short summary but a translation of the full Dutch text. This would add another way to learn from each story. It might help you pick up on sentence structure and other vocabulary not in the list as well as help you get a fuller sense of the complete story. Now, I know that extensive learning texts like this don't necessarily encourage you to do a deep dive into what I'm referring to, but it would have been nice if the authors had given the potential student the choice of whether they wanted to do that or not. All in all, though, if you are studying the Dutch language, you will most likely find this book a nice addition to enhance your learning.
This book had some pluses and minuses. I liked that it has interesting stories where something actually happens to a character or group of people. The bolded words that would then be in the vocabulary list is a nice touch. I wasn't wild about the summaries that are in both Dutch and English. The Dutch one is fine, as it adds a little more practice with the language. I would have loved to have seen the English version not be a short summary but a translation of the full Dutch text. This would add another way to learn from each story. It might help you pick up on sentence structure and other vocabulary not in the list as well as help you get a fuller sense of the complete story. Now, I know that extensive learning texts like this don't necessarily encourage you to do a deep dive into what I'm referring to, but it would have been nice if the authors had given the potential student the choice of whether they wanted to do that or not. All in all, though, if you are studying the Dutch language, you will most likely find this book a nice addition to enhance your learning.
February 15, 2024
Working my way through this slowly but I want it off my currently reading section - it is annoying me. I like the short stories that improve my vocabulary in Dutch.
January 12, 2022
good, some issues
I thought the stories were really good, and the comprehension questions at the end are excellent. However, there were some issues with the vocabulary. I’m learning Dutch so that I can move to the Netherlands with my boyfriend, who is Dutch. Every day, I read a story and then we would talk about it in Dutch. If I said ‘I learned this new word’ or asked ‘what does this word mean?’ he would often get really confused because that’s not a very common word at all—more specifically, he’d often say that sounded like old Dutch. He’s just assumed at this point that I’m reading an older publication, even though I’m… not. So that was very disheartening to hear. I think the book itself is pretty good, just has a lot of issues like that. I think part of it may be because they seem to start in English and then translate it to Dutch, but if you want it to sound natural, you really have to go the other way around! Anyway, pretty good, just keep in mind that it’s not completely natural Dutch.
Also, before I end the review, I want to mention that a couple of these stories were not very moral or kind, and I was quite shocked… example: In one story, this girl likes to gossip about other people and it gets so bad that her coworkers want to quit because she’s mean. To fix this, the boss gets some of his friends to come into the bar to gossip about her so that she’ll hear it and feel bad! I understand the "taste of her own medicine" but I found that incredibly rude and not appropriate for a language learning book. If you don’t care that’s fine—I believe it was only two stories I was annoyed with. Just be warned!
I thought the stories were really good, and the comprehension questions at the end are excellent. However, there were some issues with the vocabulary. I’m learning Dutch so that I can move to the Netherlands with my boyfriend, who is Dutch. Every day, I read a story and then we would talk about it in Dutch. If I said ‘I learned this new word’ or asked ‘what does this word mean?’ he would often get really confused because that’s not a very common word at all—more specifically, he’d often say that sounded like old Dutch. He’s just assumed at this point that I’m reading an older publication, even though I’m… not. So that was very disheartening to hear. I think the book itself is pretty good, just has a lot of issues like that. I think part of it may be because they seem to start in English and then translate it to Dutch, but if you want it to sound natural, you really have to go the other way around! Anyway, pretty good, just keep in mind that it’s not completely natural Dutch.
Also, before I end the review, I want to mention that a couple of these stories were not very moral or kind, and I was quite shocked… example: In one story, this girl likes to gossip about other people and it gets so bad that her coworkers want to quit because she’s mean. To fix this, the boss gets some of his friends to come into the bar to gossip about her so that she’ll hear it and feel bad! I understand the "taste of her own medicine" but I found that incredibly rude and not appropriate for a language learning book. If you don’t care that’s fine—I believe it was only two stories I was annoyed with. Just be warned!
January 6, 2021
Not too bad for learning
Not a bad way to learn dutch especially if you get the audible version of the book to complement your listening skills. The list of vocab at the end of each story would be better if they used the infintive of the word (so you can use in different contexts) and told you whether each noun was de or het. I had to spend a considerable amount of time looking these up so the book only gets 4 stars. I wonder if the authors need to get a dutch person to read through this book as my husband (a dutchman) raised his eyebrows a few times at the way some of this book was written.
Not a bad way to learn dutch especially if you get the audible version of the book to complement your listening skills. The list of vocab at the end of each story would be better if they used the infintive of the word (so you can use in different contexts) and told you whether each noun was de or het. I had to spend a considerable amount of time looking these up so the book only gets 4 stars. I wonder if the authors need to get a dutch person to read through this book as my husband (a dutchman) raised his eyebrows a few times at the way some of this book was written.
July 13, 2020
For Beginners?
Dutch Short Stories for Beginners, tells 20 short stories all in Dutch with summaries after the stories in both Dutch and English as well as short quizzes and vocabulary words. Unless the reader is familiar with Dutch words, these stories are impossible to read and reading sum of the English summaries makes the reader even more confused. If each story had an English version with it, it would increase learning the language which is what this book is supposed to be about.
Dutch Short Stories for Beginners, tells 20 short stories all in Dutch with summaries after the stories in both Dutch and English as well as short quizzes and vocabulary words. Unless the reader is familiar with Dutch words, these stories are impossible to read and reading sum of the English summaries makes the reader even more confused. If each story had an English version with it, it would increase learning the language which is what this book is supposed to be about.
July 20, 2020
I was looking for this type of resource - excellent to learn and practice Dutch in a more interesting and engaging way. I recommend this for learners who have at least some basic level of familiarity with the language, otherwise I can see how it may easily go from "fun" to "slightly frustrating". I'm starting to use it as a complement to the Duolingo lessons and it's really helping me progress!
January 1, 2021
I dunno, should I give this more stars? The stories are whatever but they aren’t and and it fits the bill: simple stories that incorporate new vocabulary as you go. I found them perfectly readable, though only the first one was easy (what does that say about my Dutch...). I think I picked up some vocab but I’ll probably go back through and make some lists/flash cards.
May 31, 2025
This book has significantly helped me improve my vocabulary. For that reason I am very thankful. Unfortunately, the fact that they included so much new vocabulary in each chapter made it a bit too difficult. Instead, I would have liked to focus on repetition of new vocabulary rather than the constant introduction of new words.
July 27, 2020
I love Dutch short stories for beginners. I always find difficult to find anything to read that is good for my level and also interesting subjects.
It also has exercises, questioners, about the text to make sure you understand it. I really like it!
It also has exercises, questioners, about the text to make sure you understand it. I really like it!
December 29, 2022
Great way to expand your Dutch vocabulary, very varied topics. It could be a good companion even if you are missing some of the baseline grammar, but also useful for intermediate level reader, I definitely learned a lot of new words.
May 31, 2022
Great book highly recommended to Dutch learners
November 13, 2025
Some vocabulary is missing at the end of the chapters
July 14, 2020
Excellent book for Dutch language learners. This book has several short stories each followed by a summary of the stories in both Dutch and English followed by a vocabulary list of new words learned in the story. There are also questions and answers about the story to cement understanding. I am a beginner in learning dutch and I admit that I can not read the stories without a lot of work which which has been made fun using this book. I strongly recommend this book to anybody who is serious about learning this language.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews