Dutch · Beginner
Read De scheepsjongen van "De Gouden Leeuw" in Dutchwith every sentence explained
English title: The Cabin Boy of the 'Golden Lion'
Joh. H. Been · 1920
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
De scheepsjongen van "De Gouden Leeuw" by Joh. H. Been was first published in 1920. In Passage you read the full text in the original Dutch, marked beginner and filed under children, historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 33,100 words.
A stubborn farm boy. A great East Indiaman ready to sail. A future admiral's first voyage.
December 1615, on a farm near Den Briel. The stern widow de With rules her household with an iron hand, and her eldest son, Witte, is forever in trouble. Apprenticed to a tailor, the proud, prickly boy has no wish to sit cross-legged on a workbench: his eyes are always on the sea, and on the huge ship being fitted out off Hellevoetsluis, De Gouden Leeuw, bound for the Indies.
When Captain Geen Huyghen Schapenham comes calling, and a cheerful young sailor from Hoorn, Hans Lievensz, crosses Witte's path, the door of the cage begins to open. Ahead lie ice floes, the equator, storms and the long voyage east.
Joh. H. Been, author of the classic Paddeltje, tells the boyhood of Witte de With — later one of the most famous admirals of the Dutch Golden Age — in this brisk, salty adventure for young readers.
- Author
- Joh. H. Been
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- Dutch
- Level
- Beginner
- Genre
- Children, Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 33,100 words
How it opens
Op een grauwen namiddag in de maand December van 't jaar onzes Heeren 1615, zat in de groote keuken van een hofstede, die, een half uurtje buiten den Briel, dicht bij het wagenveer naar Hellevoetsluis gelegen was, een vrouw druk aan het verstelwerk.
Hoewel het niet later dan half drie geweest zal zijn, heerschte er toch al een soort van schemering in het vertrek, dat tegelijk tot woonkamer diende, en door de kleine, in het lood gezette ruitjes van de twee ramen het daglicht moest ontvangen.
Reading De scheepsjongen van "De Gouden Leeuw" in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of Dutch and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
