An Interview with Sabrina, a Brazilian nurse learning Dutch in The Netherlands

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This This is a documentary on Sabrina, a Brazilian, 33-year-old nurse, who is living in the Netherlands for about two years. She was brought up in Sao Paulo in Brazil and Sao Paulo is the biggest city in Brazil. She has been working as a nurse and midwife for more than 10 years but here in the Netherlands, she has been working as a nurse for in a consultancy team in the healthcare sector for the past two years. She has been learning the Dutch language since her arrival, to help her acclimatize since she moved to the Netherlands. Learning Dutch has helped her to communicate better because as a nurse, it is important for use at work here, in the healthcare sector and for the daily basics. She says if she goes on the streets most of the time, most people based in Amsterdam can speak English but with the elderly people or with people in other cities in the Netherlands, speaking the language is particularly important. She chose Uva Talen to study because she was looking for where she would be taught intensively to enable her to learn fast and they offer incredibly competitive prices for learning when compared to other language schools.

    The biggest challenge so far, she says, is the accent. While working with elderly people from the Netherlands, who were from various places, she noticed that people from the Eastern part, closer to Germany, have a different accent and it affected communication. Another challenge of course, is a question of the way that you say the words here in the Netherlands. People cannot comprehend if you do not say words exactly the way that they are used to it. Sometimes, if you say a word or say a name that sounds so different from what they are used to, it would be difficult to communicate with them because you need to understand exactly the way they want to hear it. So, the question of understanding a better way to talk is by learning the accent. 

    For study tips, there are lot of apps that you can use like Duolingo, which helps any individual to practice at the same time as one is studying here. She also said that one could just go outside and try to talk with people who can speak both English and Dutch languages with you. Also, one could try to get a job that can enable one to mix up with people that you can speak the Dutch language with. One would need to study every day to get proficient in the language. It could be quite exhausting, but it is really a question of how much effort you put into it. She said that for her, every day, she tries to read some texts, like reading any kind of newsletter from the healthcare sector because she is a nurse. But depending on your job description, you can read, or study texts related to your field. She further advised that anyone could try to use any website that can help with learning the language. Here in the Netherlands, they have a website for everything so one can just surf the website, subscribe for a newsletter, or browse through articles that one could read in English and translate to Dutch or vice versa.