Dutch pronunciation: the sounds English speakers find hard

Dutch pronunciation at a glance

Dutch is written much as it is said. Most letters have one sound and most sounds one spelling, and the exceptions are few: ij and ei are one sound, and so are ou and au. Once you know which letters make which sound, you can read a new word aloud the first time you see it, apart from where the stress falls.

Most consonants work as in English: b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, s and t. The main difference is small: Dutch says p, t and k without the puff of air that English puts after them at the start of a word, so tien (ten) starts more softly than English ten. The table lists the spellings that do not sound the way an English reader expects. The IPA column, in the phonetic alphabet, is there for readers who know it.

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The Dutch g and ch

In most of the Netherlands, g and ch are the same sound: a voiceless rasp made at the back of the mouth, close to the ch of Scottish loch or German Bach. It comes in the first words you learn: goedemorgen, dag, graag, acht.

To make it, say k, then say it again without closing the gap: let the air scrape through between the back of your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Keep your voice out of it, as in a whisper. Unlike a k, you can hold it as long as you like. Many speakers in the Netherlands make it even further back, near the uvula (the small flap at the back of the mouth), which makes it rougher.

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A g at the end of a word is always this sound, so every day of the week ends in it, from maandag to zondag (the list is on the page about Dutch days and months). The ending -ig is a weak vowel plus the same sound: gezellig, prettig, and every ten from twintig to negentig on the page about Dutch numbers.

A few loanwords keep the sound of their language: goal (in football) has the English g, and the second g of garage is the zh of measure, as in French.

In the south of the Netherlands, in North Brabant and Limburg, and in Belgium, you hear the soft g, the zachte g. It is made further forward in the mouth and sounds gentler, and there the g is often voiced, so it is not quite the same sound as ch. The northern sound is called the hard g, the harde g. Both are standard Dutch and both are understood everywhere: copy the one you hear most.

Long and short vowels, and how the spelling shows them

Dutch has a short and a long version of a, e, o and u, and the difference changes the word: man is a man and maan is the moon. The long vowel is not just the short one held longer. It has a different color too, so learn each pair as two sounds.

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The spelling shows which one to say. Three rules cover almost every word:

• One vowel letter, then a consonant in the same syllable: short. man, bed, zon, bus.
• Two vowel letters: long. maan, veel, zoon, muur.
• One vowel letter at the end of a syllable: long. ma-nen (moons), le-zen (to read), bo-men (trees), nu (now).

That is why plurals change their spelling. Maan becomes manen: the a now ends its syllable, so one letter is enough. Man becomes mannen, with a double n to keep the a short. So when you read a single vowel letter, look at what follows: one consonant and then a vowel means long (manen), a double consonant means short (mannen). At the end of a word a long e is written double: twee, zee, nee.

One more vowel to know: an e without stress is usually a weak, short sound like the a of about. You hear it in de (the), at the start of bedankt (thanks) and at the end of lopen (to walk). De sounds like “duh”, not like day. The ending -lijk is usually said the same way: eigenlijk (actually) and natuurlijk (of course) end in “-luk”.

Letter names and spelling a word aloud are on the Dutch alphabet.

ie and oe: English sounds, Dutch spelling

These two are easy to say and easy to misread. ie is the ee of see: die (that), drie (three), niet (not), fiets (bike). oe is the oo of food: goed (good), boek (book), doen (to do), moe (tired). Both are shorter than in English, except before an r, where they stretch: bier (beer), boer (farmer). Spelling lessons call ie the long i, but it is said short.

The short i is the i of bit: wit (white), zit (sit), vis (fish). Swap it for ie and you have another word: vis is fish, vies is dirty. And oo is never the oo of food: a boot is a boat, and a book is a boek.

uu, eu and ui: the vowels English does not have

These three have no English partner. All three are said with rounded lips while the tongue stays at the front of the mouth, a combination English does not use. German and French speakers have a head start: uu is the German ü and the French u, and eu is close to the German ö and the French eu of peu.

uu

Say ie, the ee of see, and hold it. Now round your lips as for oe, without moving your tongue. That is uu, as in duur (expensive). A single u at the end of a syllable is the same sound: nu (now), u (you, polite). Say oe instead, and buur (neighbor) turns into boer (farmer). The short u of bus and dus (so) is a different sound: the i of bit with rounded lips.

eu

Say the a of late and round your lips: that is eu. Do not read it the English way: leuk (nice, fun) is not Luke. The classic trap is door, which in Dutch means through and is said with the o of go. The door of a house is a deur.

ui

The hardest of the three, and one of the most common, as in huis (house). Start with the short u of bus, lips rounded and the mouth a little open, then glide toward uu without letting your lips relax. It is one smooth movement inside one syllable. The usual English guesses are the ow of house, which is the Dutch ou, and the oy of boy: neither is ui.

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ij and ei, ou and au: two spellings, one sound

ij and ei are two ways of writing one sound: the city of Leiden sounds exactly like lijden (to suffer). Which spelling a word takes comes from its history, so learn it with the word.

The sound starts like the e of bed and glides toward ie, in one syllable. It is not the ee of see, so mijn does not sound like mean. Many speakers in the Netherlands, younger ones above all, open the start further, toward the English eye; you will hear both.

The pair to watch is ee and ij. In the Netherlands ee glides a little too, so week (week) and wijk (neighborhood) can sound alike to an English ear. ee starts closed and moves only a little; ij starts open and moves more.

ou and au are also one sound, close to the ow of how. Rouw (mourning) and rauw (raw) sound the same.

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The Dutch r

There is no single Dutch r. At the start of a syllable, some speakers tap or roll the tip of the tongue, as in Spanish or Italian, and others use the back of the throat, as in French or German. After a vowel, at the end of a syllable, many speakers in the Netherlands, especially in the west, use an r much like the American one, and some let it fade to almost nothing. All of these are standard Dutch.

For an English speaker that leaves one rule. At the start of a word and after a consonant, do not use the English r: tap the tip of your tongue once, like the tt of American butter, or try the r at the back of the throat. That is the r people listen for in rood (red) and groot (big). At the end of a syllable, in maar (but) or vier (four), an r close to the American one is common in the Netherlands; do not drop it, as British English does.

sch: s plus the g sound

sch is neither sk nor sh. It is an s followed straight away by the g sound: school is s, then the rasp, then ool. The same goes for schoen (shoe), schip (ship) and the airport Schiphol. In schrijven (to write) an r follows as well: s, the rasp and r, run together.

At the end of a word, in the ending -isch, the ch is silent and the ending sounds like a short “-ees”: logisch (logical), praktisch (practical), typisch (typical).

w and v

The Dutch w is not the English w. Touch your lower lip lightly with your upper teeth, as for v, but let the air through gently, without a buzz, and do not round your lips. English speakers hear something between v and w: wat (what), water (water), wonen (to live). In Belgium and the south of the Netherlands it is closer to the English w. Wind (wind) and vind (I find) differ in that first sound only.

The v moves the other way. At the start of a word, many speakers in the Netherlands say it almost as an f, so vader (father) and vier (four) start with something close to f. The z often drifts toward s too: zon (sun), zee (sea). A clear v and z are just as standard, and for a learner they keep the sound and the spelling together.

The end of a word: -en, and a d that sounds like t

Dutch has thousands of words that end in -en: plurals like boeken (books) and verbs like lopen (to walk). In everyday speech in much of the Netherlands the n drops away, and only the weak e of about is left at the end. Careful speech, and speakers in some regions, keep the n. Both are fine to say, but the n is always written.

At the end of a word, d sounds like t and b like p. Hond (dog) ends in a t sound, bed sounds like English bet, and ik heb (I have) ends in p. When a vowel follows, the d comes back: honden (dogs).

Minimal pairs: train your ear

A minimal pair is two words that differ in one sound only. Pairs are the quickest way to hear a difference that English does not make: say both words, listen to a Dutch speaker say them, and repeat until the two feel different in your mouth. Every pair below is two ordinary Dutch words.

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How to practice Dutch pronunciation

1. Listen, then read along. Play the audio of a short text before you look at the words; the ear has to know a sound before the mouth can copy it. Then pick one paragraph and read it aloud at the same time as the recording, three times, which trains the rhythm along with the sounds. The free A1 texts all have audio, and the guide to reading with audio explains how to read along.
2. Use the pairs. Say the minimal pairs above to a Dutch speaker in random order and ask which word they heard. When they get it right every time, the sound is there.
3. Record yourself. Say a sentence into your phone and compare it with the audio. Your own mistakes are easier to hear from the outside.

Typical mistakes

• The English g. goed with the g of good. Use the rasp, or the soft g of the south.
• Every vowel the same length. man and maan, zon and zoon are different words.
• uu, eu and ui with the tongue pulled back. Keep the tongue forward and round the lips, or buur becomes boer, leuk becomes Luke and huis becomes house.
• ij as the ee of see, or as Dutch ee. mijn is not mean, and wijk is not week.
• The English r at the start of a word or after a consonant. In rood and groot, tap the tongue or use the back of the throat.

See it in a text

The free texts on this site are full of these sounds. Read the sentences below aloud, then open the text and check them against its audio. Each sentence is quoted word for word.

• Door het raam ziet hij de klok in de keuken. Through the window he sees the clock in the kitchen. Door with oo, keuken with eu, ziet with ie and hij with ij. (De deur, A1)
• ‘De groene is voor de tuin,’ denkt hij. Maar zijn tuin is klein. “The green one is for the garden,” he thinks. But his garden is small. The g of groene, the ui of tuin, and one sound written two ways in zijn and klein. (De grijze bak, A1)
• Soms fietst Selam langs hem, op weg naar school. Sometimes Selam cycles past him on her way to school. ie in fietst, the g of weg said as ch, and sch in school. (Fietsles, A1)

Read next

De deur is a free A1 story with audio: Luca is watering his plants on the balcony when the door falls shut behind him, an hour before a job interview. The title has the eu of deur, and three sentences after De deur is dicht comes door (through).

For a whole book at this 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, questions and audio. It is out now as a paperback.