Learn how to talk about travel plans
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Eric: Hi everyone, and welcome back to DutchPod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate Season 1 Lesson 17 - Planning a Vacation in the Netherlands. Eric here. |
| Jacob: Hallo. I'm Jacob. |
| Eric: In this lesson you'll learn how to book a flight and arrange other things for a trip. The conversation takes place at Mark's house and over the phone. |
| Jacob: It's between Mark, Bill, and the staff from the travel agency. |
| Eric: Mark and Bill are friends, so they'll be using informal Dutch. Mark and the woman from the travel agency are client and customer, so they'll use formal Dutch. Okay, let's listen to the conversation. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| Mark: Zullen we een paar dagen naar Barcelona? |
| Bill: Lijkt me een goed idee. Hoe lang wil je weg? |
| Mark; Drie dagen ongeveer, zal ik de vluchten boeken? |
| Bill: Ja dat is goed, kunnen we business-class vliegen? |
| Mark: Ja dat is prima. Ik ga bellen. |
| Mark: Goedemorgen, ik wil een korte reis boeken. |
| Reisagent: Waarheen meneer? |
| Mark: Ik wil twee retourtickets voor Barcelona, de twaalfde (12de) juni heen en de vijftiende (15de) terug. En dan ook nog kaartjes voor de bus naar het centrum. |
| Reisagent: Wilt u economy of business? Wilt u stoelen bij het raam of aan het gangpad? |
| Mark: Businessclass. Stoelen maakt me niet zoveel uit maar wel naast elkaar. |
| Reisagent: Goed, dat kan ik nu onmiddellijk boeken. Als ik uw email-adres mag, krijgt u vandaag alle gegevens nog toegestuurd. |
| Mark: Dank u wel. |
| Eric: Listen to the conversation with the English translation. |
| Mark: Shall we go to Barcelona for a few days? |
| Bill: That sounds nice. How long would you like to go for? |
| Mark: About three days. Do you want me to book the flights? |
| Bill: Yes, alright. Can we fly business class? |
| Mark: Fine by me. I'll make the call. |
| Mark: Good morning. I'd like to book a short trip. |
| Travel agent: Where to sir? |
| Mark: I want two return tickets to Barcelona, leaving on the twelfth of June and coming back on the fifteenth. And some tickets for the bus to the city center. |
| Travel agent: Would you like to fly economy or business class? Window seats or aisle seats? |
| Mark: Business class please and any seats are fine, but next to each other please. |
| Travel agent: Right. I can book this straight away. If I may have your email address, I'll send you all the details before tonight. |
| Mark: Thank you. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Eric: Jacob, speaking of vacations, how many paid holidays do Dutch people have a year? |
| Jacob: Compared to many other countries the Dutch get a lot of vacation days. Some companies offer up to 23 or 24 paid vacation days a year. |
| Eric: Wow, that’s a lot. So if you plan well and use the weekends between weekdays, you could have almost... 5 weeks off in a row, right? |
| Jacob: That’s right. Of course you'd need to get approval first, but it’s possible. |
| Eric: So what do people do when they've got some time off? |
| Jacob: If it’s summer, many Dutch people go to southern European countries for camping and the beach. And we have skiing holidays in Austria, Switzerland, or France in the winter. |
| Eric: Even though Holland doesn’t have any mountains, it’s nice that people can easily go somewhere to enjoy skiing. Okay, now onto the vocab. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Eric: Let’s take a look at the vocabulary from this lesson. The first word is.. |
| Jacob: reis [natural native speed] |
| Eric: trip, journey |
| Jacob: reis [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: reis [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Jacob: boeken [natural native speed] |
| Eric: to book |
| Jacob: boe-ken [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: boeken [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Jacob: retourticket [natural native speed] |
| Eric: return ticket |
| Jacob: re-tour-ticket [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: retourticket [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Jacob: stoel [natural native speed] |
| Eric: chair, seat |
| Jacob: stoel [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: stoel [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Jacob: raam [natural native speed] |
| Eric: window |
| Jacob: raam [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: raam [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have.. |
| Jacob: gangpad [natural native speed] |
| Eric: aisle |
| Jacob: gang-pad [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: gangpad [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have |
| Jacob: gegeven [natural native speed] |
| Eric: data |
| Jacob: ge-ge-ven [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: gegeven [natural native speed] |
| Eric: Next we have |
| Jacob: toesturen [natural native speed] |
| Eric: to send |
| Jacob: toe-stu-ren [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: toesturen [natural native speed] |
| Eric: And last.. |
| Jacob: onmiddellijk [natural native speed] |
| Eric: immediately |
| Jacob: onmiddellijk [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Jacob: onmiddellijk [natural native speed] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Eric: Let's have a closer look at some of the words and phrases from this lesson. What’s the first phrase? |
| Jacob: Een reis boeken. |
| Eric: meaning "to book a trip." |
| Jacob: Een reis is "a journey" or "a trip" or "a voyage." The word reis can also be combined with other nouns to add information. For example ontdekkingsreis is an “exploratory expedition." |
| Eric: I see. What about the verb? |
| Jacob: We have boeken, meaning “to book.” It’s a plural form of the singular verb boek. |
| Eric: Can you give us an example? How can we say "I book a trip" using this word? |
| Jacob: ik boek een reis. You can use this verb with different nouns too. For example,een passage boeken |
| Eric: “book a passage,” |
| Jacob: een reis boeken |
| Eric: “book a trip,” |
| Jacob: Or een hotelkamer boeken. |
| Eric: “to book a hotel room,” What about in a sentence? How can we use it? |
| Jacob: Ik heb mijn secretaresse een reis laten boeken. |
| Eric: ..which means "I had my secretary book a trip." Okay, now onto the lesson focus. |
Lesson focus |
| Eric: In this lesson, you'll learn how to book a flight and arrange other things. These days you can buy tickets on the internet. But if you live in the Netherlands, you might have a chance to book a flight at a travel agency, or at an airport counter. |
| Jacob: So let’s start with how to say what you need. In the dialogue, we have.. Ik wil twee retourtickets voor Barcelona, de twaalfde (12de) juni heen en de vijftiende (15de) terug. |
| Eric: “I want two return tickets to Barcelona, leaving on the twelfth of June and coming back on the fifteenth.” It’s a bit long, but you can use it to make any request by replacing the destination’s name and the dates. |
| Jacob: That’s right. Just by breaking it down, you can first say.. Ik wil twee retourtickets voor Barcelona |
| Eric: “I want two return tickets to Barcelona.” |
| Jacob: Note that here, Ik wil is a casual way to say “I want.” A politer way would be Ik wil graag, |
| Eric: which means “I would like.” How can we say the same sentence using the formal phrase? |
| Jacob: Ik wil graag twee retourtickets voor Barcelona. |
| Eric: And you can add an additional request, for example... |
| Jacob: de twaalfde (12de) juni heen en de vijftiende (15de) terug. |
| Eric: “leaving on the twelfth of June and coming back on the fifteenth.” |
| Jacob: And note that Mark is using less formal words here. He used heen to mean “going there” and terug for “back,” instead of the more formal words heenreis and terugreis. |
| Eric: Is that okay? |
| Jacob: It depends on the situation, but when the conversation is taking a long time, or the question you were asked is less formal, for example, wat wilt u for “what do you want?”, it’s okay to use less formal words in the answer too. |
| Eric: Okay. And in the dialogue, there was a question about choosing the class. |
| Jacob: That’s right. We have.. Wilt u economyclass of businessclass? Wilt u stoelen bij het raam of aan het gangpad?’ |
| Eric: “Would you like to fly economy or business class? Window seats or aisle seats?” I think anybody could understand this question even if they didn’t know any Dutch, because economy class and business class sound almost the same in English. |
| Jacob: That’s right. The words economyclass and businessclass are loanwords from English, but so accepted that Dutch grammar rules apply to them. They are turned into single nouns. |
| Eric: So when you write them, you need to put “economy” and “class” together without a space between. |
| Jacob: That’s right. When you look at the lesson notes, you can see the same pattern with the Dutch word for “travel agency” or in Dutch reisbureau. |
| Eric: It's two words in English, but we put it together as a single word in Dutch. |
| Jacob: Right, there’s no space between reis meaning “trip” and bureau meaning “agency.” |
| Eric: And it's not just for those words. In Dutch you can't put two nouns after each other to refer to one thing. They will be turned into one word or be coupled with a hyphen. Before we finish this lesson, let’s quickly review the words for “window seat” and “aisle seat." |
| Jacob: Sure. First we have.. een stoel bij het raam |
| Eric: “a seat by the window” or “window seat.” |
| Jacob: een stoel aan het gangpad |
| Eric: “a seat by the aisle” or “an aisle seat.” |
Outro |
| Eric: Okay, that’s all for this lesson. Thank you for listening, everyone, and we’ll see you next time! Bye! |
| Jacob: Tot Ziens! |
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