Nobody ever failed my exercises. It took me a while to realise that was a problem.
People would complete them, get the answers right, and tell me they understood everything. And yet some of those same people would sit in a meeting the next day and say almost nothing.
For a long time I thought I needed better exercises. I did not. I needed to look at what I was measuring.
We measure understanding, and then we call it language ability
Look at almost everything that is used to assess Dutch, and notice what it actually asks you to do.
- Can you read this text?
- Do you understand this sentence?
- Can you choose the right word?
All useful things. But none of them tell you whether you can say what you want to say when it matters. They test whether you recognise Dutch, not whether you can produce it, at speed, out loud, while someone is waiting for your answer.
We measure understanding, and then we call it language ability. And we get good at what we practise.
That is the whole mechanism. If you have spent three years reading, listening, doing exercises and following conversations, you have become excellent at understanding Dutch. You have barely practised the other thing. So when the moment comes, the words are in there and the route to them has never been used.
It is not a vocabulary problem. It is a production problem, and it needs a different kind of practice than the one that got you here.
And there is a second thing, which is harder to say out loud
When you speak English, or your own language, who are you? How do you express yourself? What makes you sound like you, the particular way you make a point, or soften one, or make someone laugh?
And what happens to that person when you switch to Dutch?
Most people go quieter. Ideas stay unspoken. Opinions come out simpler than they really are. The joke never quite makes it. Not because there is nothing to say, but because saying it well in another language is genuinely hard, and the version of you that arrives in the room is smaller than the one who walked in.
Speaking Dutch is not only about finding the right words. It is about being able to bring your own thoughts, personality and way of communicating into those words too.
That is why professional Dutch is not workplace vocabulary. It is the Dutch you need to sound like the capable adult you already are, whether that is in a job interview, in a meeting, or in a conversation that goes past the weather.
Someone who was in exactly this position
“For almost nine years I heard Dutch every single day, and I still could not speak it.”
That is how Anjela described it. She picked up words everywhere and understood far more than people around her assumed. But the moment she had to speak, she froze: overthinking every sentence, speaking too slowly, wanting it to be right, and then switching back to English.
In her case there was a real foundation missing, so we fixed that first. She had all the words and not the structure to turn them into clear sentences. Once that clicked, the rest was speaking. Not speaking well. Just speaking more, making mistakes, and going again.
“The best part of the lessons for me was realising that I can speak Dutch.”
Anjela, A1 to B1
The sentence of hers that stayed with me is a different one though. Somewhere along the way, mistakes stopped being the thing to avoid. “I want to make mistakes”, she said, because she had worked out that most people are not judging, they are trying to help. Today she speaks with neighbours, in shops, on the street while walking her dog, and over coffee at work. Not perfect Dutch. Real Dutch.
What actually closes the gap
Four things, and none of them is another course.
- Speak before you are ready. Waiting until your Dutch is good enough means practising understanding for longer, which is the skill you already have. The gap only closes from the other side.
- Speak somewhere it costs you nothing. The reason people freeze at work, or in a job interview, is that those rooms are expensive: your credibility is in them. You need a place where a wrong sentence costs you nothing at all, so that the right one can arrive later, at work, where it counts.
- Stay in Dutch when it gets uncomfortable. Not waiting until you understand every word, but continuing the conversation anyway. When a colleague switches to English to be kind, you are allowed to say you would rather keep going in Dutch. It feels awkward roughly twice.
- Practise the situations you are actually in. Not a textbook dialogue at a market stall, but the interview, the update to your manager, the lunch table where everyone switched to Dutch, and above all the meeting where you go quiet.
None of that is complicated. It is just the opposite of what most people do, which is to study more and speak later. What you are building this way has a name: professional Dutch, the Dutch you need to work as the professional you already are. If you have already done the studying, three courses deep, that has its own page. And if you keep switching back to English halfway through, so does that.
Where to start, honestly
If you want to start today and on your own, the free Spreekwafel app is built for exactly this: ten minutes a day, out loud, around real work situations. It costs nothing and there is no catch.
If what you need is other people who hear you and respond, that is what Spreekwafel Circle is for. Speaking with professionals at your own level every week, a weekly assignment with feedback, and a monthly masterclass. The group starts on 1 October 2026.
And if you would rather talk it through first, that is fine too. I will tell you honestly if what you need is not what I sell.
Questions people ask about this
Why can I understand Dutch but not speak it?
Because understanding and speaking are two different skills, and almost everything you have practised so far trained the first one. Reading, listening and multiple choice all ask you to recognise Dutch. Speaking asks you to produce it, under time pressure, while someone is looking at you. You get good at what you practise, and most people have practised recognising.
How long does it take to start speaking Dutch if I already understand it?
Usually much less time than people expect, because the Dutch is already there. What is missing is access to it. Most people notice a shift within weeks once they start speaking out loud regularly, rather than after another course.
Should I wait until my Dutch is better before I start speaking?
No, and this is the trap. Waiting until you are ready means practising understanding for longer, which is the skill you already have. The way out is speaking before you feel ready, somewhere it costs you nothing when it comes out wrong.
What do I do when someone switches to English?
Stay in Dutch anyway, or say out loud that you would like to continue in Dutch. Most people switch to be kind, not to correct you, and they will happily switch back if you ask. It feels uncomfortable exactly twice.
Is this about grammar?
Partly, and only where grammar is what stops you from building a sentence. For some people a missing foundation really is the blockage. For most people the words and the rules are already there, and the problem is that they never come out under pressure.
Written by Jacky van der Starre, who teaches professionals to speak the Dutch they already understand.