Learning diary #1 Learning Dutch vocabulary
People say you don’t need Dutch to live in the Netherlands.
Honestly… I think that’s BS. You can survive, but you won’t belong.
And learning the language isn’t just about living — it also feels like a way of respecting the society I’m in.
I’ve been moving between the Netherlands and the UK this past year.
Living in the UK felt natural. But in the Netherlands, even small things felt confusing — like not knowing whether to push or pull a door.
So I tried to learn:
apps, word puzzles, podcasts…
But it never really clicked:
・same words again and again
・too much pressure to finish lessons with lots of words I won’t actually use
・overwhelmed by too many new words
So I built a small tool for myself. No pressure. No long lessons.
Just enter a word → get 3 related words → and a short story using all of them (with English translation of course)
Start with one word, and build my world from it. Learning in small chunks consistently works better than trying too hard and giving up.