[usrnm]

It is a rather big problem, yes. You can absolutely get by without speaking any Dutch, I know people who have spent 10+ years in the country with just very basic knowledge of the language. Absolutely kills the motivation for a lot of people.

[wdb]

You can't even order food or drinks in Dutch anymore in a lot of places in Amsterdam. It's a bit of a bummer when you are back in your home country and can't even speak your mother tongue

[andrepd]

Also Dutch is, let's put it this way, not the prettiest language, nor the most useful. I'm sure that also kills plenty of motivation.

[com]

I’d disagree, on the pretty front.

As I’ve learned it, I found it very charming and often surprisingly sweet - as an example idiomatic terms for urination and defecation are very funny: plassen (making a large pond) and klaaivormen (forming clay) - add to that a rather easy to rhyme language with a tendency towards charming and heartfelt emotional range, and the end result is quite nice.

Add lots of domestic and Caribbean regional variation in the home countries, close sister languages: Vlaams (certainly in its higher form a very different register of the language than the Hollands standard form), Afrikaans and West-Frisk, Papiamento etc and you’ve got a very cosy (gezellig!) and dynamic inter-language community!

The aggressive simplification of standard Dutch initially offended my tastes, but later I’ve found that particular discipline improved my English by accident and I’m now a fan of the sparse elegance and surprising nuance of that style …

[wdb]

I think you mean 'kleien' instead of 'klaaivormen'?

[com]

I’ve heard “kleivormen” in Hoorn, “klei maken” (a little more gross - no surprise given their famous export, disease swearing, I suppose) in Den Haag, and “kleien” below the great rivers.

Edit: spelling, never ran into the NL word for clay in writing as an adult language learner not into geophysics, civil engineering or pottery

[lucb1e]

What makes a language pretty? I'm not sure I ever saw/heard one that was pretty beyond what I'd say is in the eye/ear of the beholder

But agreed on it being pretty useless outside of a few small regions / couple million speakers. I've been saying we should apply winning team joining and get to something more internationally useful, as everyone here seems to already agree we are small and that trade and cooperation has brought the current prosperity. The area I'm from, though, people clutch to local dialects as cultural heritage that should be continued to be spoken... it doesn't even have a writing system... whatever, I don't mind so long as people are okay with a useful language alongside