Vocabulary
The longest Dutch word, funny Dutch words and words that are hard to pronounce
The longest Dutch word in the Dikke Van Dale, the standard dictionary, is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis: 35 letters, multiple personality disorder. But Dutch can glue words together without limit, so the honest answer is that there is no longest Dutch word, only the longest one somebody wrote down. This page has the record holders and the story behind them, why Dutch makes such long words and how to read them, and then the fun part: words with funny literal meanings, from handschoen (hand shoe, a glove) to pindakaas (peanut cheese), and the words that are hardest to pronounce, with the reason for each.
The longest Dutch word: the record holders
Ask a Dutch dictionary and you get one answer; ask the Guinness Book of Records and you get another; ask a linguist and you get a shrug. All three are right, because they count different things. Here are the words that come up, with the letters counted.
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The Van Dale word is the one to quote when someone asks. It is a real term with a real use. The carnival word is a different kind of thing: it was built to be long, nobody has needed it since, and it only shows what Dutch allows. The same goes for the word every Dutch speaker names first, hottentottententententoonstelling, an exhibition of Hottentot tents, 33 letters: a tongue-twister that was never needed either (Hottentot is an old and now offensive name for the Khoikhoi people of southern Africa; the word lives on only in this joke).
What Dutch allows is the real answer. A compound can take another part whenever a speaker needs one, and the dictionary simply stops listing at some point. Start with verzekering (insurance, 11 letters), make it ziektekostenverzekering (health insurance, 23), then the company that sells it, ziektekostenverzekeringsmaatschappij (36), then its director, ziektekostenverzekeringsmaatschappijdirecteur (45). Every step is correct Dutch, and there is no rule that says where to stop. So there is no longest Dutch word, only the longest one somebody bothered to write down.
Why Dutch words get so long
English makes compounds too, but it writes most of them as two words: health insurance, shopping list, birthday party. Dutch writes a compound as one word, as a rule, and that is the whole secret. Zorgverzekering, boodschappenlijstje and verjaardagsfeest say exactly what the English says, in the same order, without the spaces. Dutch even has a name for the mistake of writing a compound as two words: the Engelse ziekte, the English disease. A hyphen is allowed when a long word is hard to read, and required in a few cases, but the normal form is one word.
Two things help you read one. First, the last part is the real noun: it says what the thing is, and the parts before it say which kind. A ziekenhuis is a huis (a house) for the sick, a fietsenstalling is a stalling (storage) for bikes. Swap the parts and the meaning turns around: chocolademelk is chocolate milk and melkchocolade is milk chocolate. The last part also decides the article: het huis, so het ziekenhuis. That rule, a compound takes the article of its last part, is one of the three that always work on the page about de or het.
Second, the parts are often joined by a linking letter. An s is common: verjaardag + s + feest. An en appears when the first word has a plural in -en and no other: pannenkoek (pancake), boekenkast (bookcase), boodschappenlijstje. The stress usually falls on the first part, as in the English blackbird, which is why a long word sounds like one word and not like a sentence.
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Most of the parts are common words: zorg, feest, lijst, gesprek and gebruik are all among the 1,000 most common Dutch words. The rest, such as verzekering, vergunning and toeslag, are words you look up once and then recognize in every compound they turn up in. Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekering looks like a wall of letters on an insurance letter; read as arbeid, ongeschiktheid and verzekering it is three words you can look up.
Funny Dutch words: what they say word for word
Because Dutch builds words from parts it already has, many everyday words carry a small picture inside them. A glove is a hand shoe, a seal is a sea dog, peanut butter is peanut cheese. The pictures are not jokes to a Dutch speaker, who stopped seeing them long ago, but for a learner they are the most interesting Dutch words, and the easiest to remember.
Animals
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Food
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Pindakaas has a story. The word came from Suriname, where ground peanuts were pressed into a block and cut in slices, like cheese; it is older than the spread. When Calvé brought the first Dutch peanut butter to the shops in 1948, the law kept boter for real butter, so the old Surinamese name was the one at hand, and it stuck. Sinaasappel is older still: Sina was probably an old name for China, where the sweet orange came from.
The house and the town
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Family words have their own surprises. A kleinkind, a small child, is a grandchild, and a schoonmoeder looks like a clean mother but is a mother-in-law: schoon here is the old word for fair or beautiful, as in the French belle-mère. And the sign @ is an apenstaartje, a monkey’s little tail, which you will need when you spell an email address; how to spell the rest is on the page about the Dutch alphabet.
Dutch words that are hard to pronounce
The hard words are hard for the same few reasons: the g and ch, a rasp made at the back of the mouth that English does not have; sch, which is an s followed by that rasp, not sh; the vowel ui; and clusters of consonants that English never puts together. How to make each sound is on the page about Dutch pronunciation. The words below are the ones learners and visitors stumble over most, with the reason for each.
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Scheveningen has a history. The story goes that in the Second World War the Dutch used it to tell their own people from Germans, who say sch as sh. The evidence is anecdotal, but the word is still a good test for an English speaker. The tens, and how 88 is built from acht and tachtig, are on the page about Dutch numbers.
None of these words needs a new sound once you have the rasp of g and ch and the vowel ui. The difficulty is only that Dutch puts those sounds next to each other, so practice them slowly, one part at a time: Sche, ve, ningen.
A long word is usually two short ones you know
This is the learning angle, and it is good news. Dutch has fewer long words to learn than it seems, because almost every long word is made of short ones. When you meet one in a text, read it from the back: the last part tells you what the thing is, the parts before it tell you which kind, and a lone s or en between them is a linking letter, not a word. Verblijfsvergunning is a vergunning (permit) for your verblijf (stay). Boodschappenlijstje is a small lijst (list) of boodschappen (groceries), with the -je that makes every Dutch noun small.
Learn the short words first, then. The 1,000 most common Dutch words are the parts that long words are made of, and the twelve grammar rules cover what a long word does in a sentence: its article, its plural, its place. In the free texts on this site a long compound is glossed as a whole the first time it appears, so you can guess the meaning from the parts and then check it with one tap.
See it in a text
The free texts on this site are full of compounds, because Dutch is. Each sentence below is quoted word for word from its text.
- Om vier uur heeft hij een sollicitatiegesprek. At four he has a job interview. (sollicitatie + gesprek: an application conversation. De deur, A1)
- Brood met kaas, brood met pindakaas, brood met de kleine bruine stukjes. Bread with cheese, bread with peanut butter, bread with the small brown bits. (Pindakaas, peanut cheese; the small brown bits are hagelslag. De volle broodtrommel, A1)
- Ze zet de waterkoker aan. She switches the kettle on. (Water + koker: a water boiler. Geen stroom, A1)
- Op de bel zit een sticker van een lieveheersbeestje, rood met zwarte stippen. On the bell there is a sticker of a ladybug, red with black dots. (Lieve + heer + s + beestje: the dear Lord’s little creature. De fiets van 40 euro, A2)
- Elif vond dat grappig, een verjaardagskalender op de wc, maar ze las nooit wat erop stond. Elif found it funny, a birthday calendar in the toilet, but she never read what was on it. (Verjaardag + s + kalender, and a Dutch habit in one sentence. Trakteren, B1)
Read next
De volle broodtrommel is a free A1 story with a glossary, and three of the words on this page are in it: Omar packs rice and chicken in his son’s broodtrommel every day, and every day it comes back full, until he joins the class in the park and sees what 25 other children have on their bread: pindakaas and hagelslag. More stories at this level are in the free A1 texts.
For a whole book at the beginner level, Fairy Tales is the A1 volume of the Dutch Readers series: eight famous fairy tales, from Little Red Riding Hood to The Little Mermaid, retold in easy Dutch, with a glossary and questions after every tale. It is out now as a paperback.
What is the longest Dutch word?
The longest entry in the Dikke Van Dale, the standard dictionary, is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis, 35 letters, multiple personality disorder; its plural has 38. The Guinness Book of Records listed a made-up 49-letter word about preparing a children’s carnival parade. But Dutch compounds can grow without limit, so there is no real longest word, only the longest one somebody wrote down.
Why are Dutch words so long?
Because Dutch writes every compound as one word, where English writes most of them as two. Health insurance is zorgverzekering and shopping list is boodschappenlijstje: the same parts, in the same order, without the spaces. Read a long word from the back: the last part says what the thing is, the parts before it say which kind.
What does pindakaas mean?
Peanut butter. Word for word it is peanut cheese: the word comes from Suriname, where ground peanuts were pressed into a block and sliced like cheese. When the spread reached the Netherlands in 1948, boter was reserved for real butter, and the Surinamese name stayed.
Which Dutch word is the hardest to pronounce?
For English speakers, usually Scheveningen: sch is an s followed by the Dutch g, a rasp at the back of the mouth, and the word has that rasp twice. Gracht, goochelaar and the number achtentachtig are hard for the same reason, and ui is a vowel English does not have. The sounds themselves are explained on the pronunciation page.