Nobody announces this. There is no moment where someone says the team has switched. It simply drifts.
A reorganisation puts you with different colleagues. A new manager is Dutch. Two people join and the balance tips. And one day you notice that the meeting is still in English out of courtesy, but everything around it is not: the chat before it starts, the corridor conversation afterwards, the message thread where the actual decision gets made.
The official language of your company is English. The real one, increasingly, is not, and what closes that distance is professional Dutch rather than more study.
What you are actually missing is not information
You can get the information. Someone will summarise, the notes exist, your manager will fill you in.
What you cannot get afterwards is the rest of it: the tone of how something was said, the objection someone raised and dropped, the running joke, the sense of being in the room rather than briefed about it. Over months, being reliably one step outside the conversation is tiring in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who has not done it.
You are not missing the meeting. You are missing everything around the meeting, and that is where a team actually lives.
Someone whose colleagues all spoke Dutch
He wanted to understand the meetings. What he really wanted was to make the joke.
Nick is a marketing manager. Most of his colleagues speak English perfectly well, but with nearly everyone being Dutch, the internal chats and the best jokes were in Dutch too.
He wanted to understand more of what was said at work, and not only at lunch: in meetings, in presentations, in client conversations. But he was clear that understanding was not the goal. He wanted to join in, put ideas into the conversation, and eventually throw in a joke of his own. That was the actual target.
In the beginning our conversations were mostly in English. Week by week he warmed up and slipped into Dutch more naturally, until most of the lessons were in Dutch with the occasional English word sneaking through.
“The things I learn in our lessons, I can use right away. I recognise the words in meetings, and it is getting easier and easier to respond.”
Nick, A2 to B1, marketing manager
He went from A2 to B1, which is the part you can put on paper. The part that mattered was that he stopped listening quietly and started showing up in the conversation.
How to do this without trying to convert your whole job at once
- Pick one situation, not everything. The lunch table, or the first five minutes of the stand up, or your one on ones. One place where Dutch is the default now. Trying to switch your entire working life at once is how people quit in week two.
- Ask specifically, not generally. Not please speak Dutch with me, which everyone forgets by Thursday, but could we keep our one on ones in Dutch, and I will ask when I miss something. Concrete requests get honoured.
- Ask what the joke was. It feels like the least professional thing you could do. It is the fastest way into a team, because it says you want to be part of the conversation rather than beside it.
- Let them know you are working on it. Colleagues switch to English to be kind. Once they know you are deliberately practising, most of them become allies rather than obstacles. More on that in why you switch back to English.
- Start with the meeting itself last. It is the most expensive room in the building. There is a whole page about that one.
If this happened to you rather than being chosen
Worth saying plainly: a team that becomes Dutch speaking is not something you signed up for. You took a job in an English speaking company and the ground moved.
It is reasonable to be annoyed about that, and it is also worth asking your employer to carry part of it. More and more organisations treat Dutch as part of onboarding or development, and the argument that lands is not about language. It is about participation, and about keeping people who would otherwise slowly disengage.
Where to start
The free Spreekwafel app is ten minutes a day of speaking out loud, built around real workplace situations. It is the lowest possible barrier and it costs nothing.
Spreekwafel Circle gives you what a team cannot: a place where speaking badly costs you nothing, with other professionals at your own level, every week. The group starts on 1 October 2026.
If your employer might support this, get in touch and I will help you put together the case.
Questions people ask about this
My company works in English. Why would I need Dutch?
The company works in English. The corridor, the lunch table, the quick chat before the meeting starts and the jokes usually do not. A surprising amount of what happens at work happens in exactly those places.
My team switched to Dutch after a reorganisation. Where do I start?
With one situation, not with the whole job. Pick the lunch table or the first five minutes of a stand up, and make that the part you do in Dutch. Trying to convert everything at once is how people give up in week two.
Should I ask my colleagues to speak Dutch with me?
Yes, and be specific about it. Not a general request but a concrete one: could we do our one on ones in Dutch, or could you keep the stand up in Dutch and I will ask if I miss something. People are almost always glad to help when they know exactly how.
What if I miss the joke?
Ask what it was. It feels like the least professional thing you could possibly do and it is the fastest route into a team, because it shows you want to be in the conversation rather than beside it.
Will my employer pay for this?
More and more employers do treat Dutch as part of onboarding or development, particularly when a team has become Dutch speaking. It is worth asking, and the argument that works is participation and retention rather than language as such.
Written by Jacky van der Starre, who teaches professionals to speak the Dutch they already understand.