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Tag Archives: spelling

This Is How Dutch Letters Sound Posted by on Dec 9, 2019

The alfabet (alphabet) of a language is essential when you’re learning it. When you try to make yourself understood, but you mispronounce a word, it is helpful to be able to spell the word out – and knowing what the alphabet looks and sounds like is quite helpful! So here is a list of all…

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Trema’s: ë, ï, ü, ö, ä Posted by on Dec 14, 2017

Dutch is a pretty straightforward language when it comes to letters available. There’s just the simple 26, no special letters such as å or æ. Easy from A to Z! But… There are instances where a trema (diaeresis, the famous Umlaut in German) appears in Dutch. Where and why, though? eu, oe, ui, au, ou First, there are the tweeklanken that you should know…

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Tweeklanken 4: oe, oei, oi, ooi Posted by on Aug 23, 2017

In the past weeks, we talked about tweeklanken. Today is our last instalment with one of the least common combinations: those with an o. Let’s start! The past posts in this series: Tweeklanken 1: ae, ai, aai, au/ou Tweeklanken 2: ie, ieu(w), ij/ei Tweeklanken 3: eeu(w), ei, eu, ui oe Oe is actually super common. It…

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Tweeklanken 3: eeu(w), ei, eu, ui Posted by on Aug 14, 2017

Hi again. Welcome to the third instalment on the series on tweeklanken.  Today, we discuss those that start with an e. Last week, we discussed ei already, as it is very much related to the ij. The other two tweeklanken with e are pretty straightforward, I think. Furthermore, because the ui and eu are kind of related in what they sound like, I will also discuss ui today. They are…

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Tweeklanken 2: ie, ieu(w), ij/ei Posted by on Aug 8, 2017

Hi there! Welcome to the second post on tweeklanken, or vowel combinations. Here’s last week’s post on ae, ai, aai, and au/ou. Today we have an exciting one, because we will discuss the ij, one very special letter in the Dutch alphabet and in the realm of tweeklanken. Apart from the ij, we will discuss the ie and ieu(w) today, because they also start with an i…

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Tweeklanken 1: ae, ai, aai, au/ou Posted by on Jul 31, 2017

Dutch is pretty straightforward with its alfabet (alphabet): It has 26 letters, there are no special ones. So, that’s pretty simple! However, there are some lettercombinaties (letter combinations) that create a different sound. There are 16 of them, and in the coming weeks, we will have a look at all of them. Today, we start of with those starting…

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More on why some words get a double consonant in the plural form while others don’t Posted by on Apr 19, 2013

Earlier this week, we tackled the question of why some words get a double consonant in the plural form while others don’t. We talked about Dutch words that have the short vowel sound like bot (bone) and man (man) that need that double consonant in the plural form (botten and mannen) to maintain their short vowel…

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