About Learn Dutch For Expats
Learn Dutch For Expats is an iOS app, currently in early access, that teaches practical everyday Dutch to expats in the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium in five-minute lessons built around real situations. It is made by VP0 and founded by Lawrence Arya, who also writes the site's guides.
What it is
Learn Dutch For Expats is built for one person: the international who has just moved to the Netherlands or Flanders, speaks English well, and keeps freezing at the checkout, the gemeente desk, or the landlord's WhatsApp. Each lesson takes about five minutes and covers one real situation: ordering coffee, replying to a Dutch message, the bike repair shop, a doctor's appointment, small talk at work. Every phrase comes with audio, a plain-English meaning, and a note on how to say it naturally. Where the Netherlands and Flanders differ, the lesson says so.
It is not a grammar course and it does not promise fluency. It promises the handful of phrases that make a normal day feel normal.
Where it stands today
Early access. iOS app in development; join the waitlist at https://learndutchforexpats.com/waitlist/. Not yet listed on the App Store.
Until the listing is live, the only things you can get from us are the free guides on this site and a place on the early-access list. We do not sell anything yet, and no guide on this site was written to sell anything.
Who makes it
Learn Dutch For Expats is made by VP0, a small product studio. Lawrence Arya is the founder of Learn Dutch For Expats, an iOS app in early access that teaches everyday Dutch to expats in the Netherlands and Flanders, and he writes the guides on this site. Each guide starts from one real situation, gives the Dutch you need for it, and links to the official source where a rule, fee or form is involved. You can reach him through LinkedIn or the address below.
How the guides are written
There are 66 guides, sorted into nine topics: Learning Dutch, Phrases & daily life, Housing & home, Government & admin, Work & business, Health & care, Getting around, Students, family & social, Cities & regions.
Each one starts from a single situation an expat actually runs into, gives the Dutch you need for it, and explains the rule, fee or form behind it. Where a guide quotes a rule, a price or a deadline, it links to the official source (the IND, the Belastingdienst, a gemeente, the NS, and so on) so you can check it yourself. Guides carry a published date and an updated date; the updated date only moves when the content genuinely changed.
Some guides compare language apps, including ours. In those, our app gets one row in the table and the same scrutiny as every other option, and the text says plainly that it is in early access.
We do not accept paid placements, sponsored guides or affiliate links. Drafting tools, including AI, are used in research and first drafts; every published guide is read, checked against its sources and edited by a person before it goes live, and the person named on the byline is responsible for it.
Corrections
Dutch rules change every January, prices move, and forms get renamed. If you find something wrong or out of date, email [email protected] with the guide's address and what you saw. Corrections are made in the guide itself, the updated date moves, and a note is added at the bottom of the guide when the change affects what a reader should do.
Contact
Everything, from a typo to a partnership, goes to [email protected]. There is also a contact form. We reply to every message.