Today I started formally learning Dutch, following some inspiration concerning the DAFT (which I expect to cover in another post).

...This is much harder than I anticipated. I expected having a moderate command of German would give me an edge. In some ways it does, but in others it feels like I have a lot to "un-learn". For many words with a very similar German equivalent, I catch myself frequently falling into the German pronunciation (jongen, vrouw). There are also more sounds than I anticipated—I wrongfully expected "German-lite", but there are several vowel sounds that I am having difficulty with (some of which I remind me of my brief stint with French, which also gave me issue).

I've heard this joked about for some Germanic languages, but maybe there's something to it: I've had some improvement in my pronuncation (of, for example, goedemorgen) by holding something in my mouth!