Whether you were a spelling bee champion or a spelling bee drop-out, Dutch has some spelling rules of its own for you to contend with. I will cover the main spelling rules in two posts.<\/p>\n
Getting Friendly with Closed and Open Syllables<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n If you have been wondering why some Dutch words gain or lose letters at the blink of an eye, then understanding closed and open syllables is going to help make things clearer.<\/p>\n Closed Syllable<\/strong> = a syllable that ends in a consonant (think c for closed, c for consonant) Divide and Conquer<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In order to know if a syllable ends in a consonant or a vowel, you first need to know where to divide the syllables:<\/p>\n Spelling with Short Vowels<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 1. The Dutch short vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are always written with one letter and usually occur in a closed syllable.<\/p>\n 2. So, if another syllable is added (like \u2013en<\/em> to make the word plural), the consonant is doubled.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at an example using the Dutch word man<\/em>, which conveniently means man in English (words in red<\/span> are not correct but are written to show you why the change occurs):<\/p>\n Man<\/em> = closed syllable –> Add \u2013en<\/em> to make it plural Manen<\/span><\/em> –> The short vowel sound \u2018a\u2019 would no longer be in a closed syllable since the division, as per the rules above, would occur before the consonant ma-nen<\/em><\/span> (manen<\/em> means moons) –> So, we must double the consonant to keep our first syllable short –> mannen<\/em><\/span> (divided as man-nen<\/em><\/span>)<\/p>\n 3. When one of the short vowel sounds occurs in a word of one syllable, where it is already followed by more than one consonant, no change needs to be made when a second syllable is added (kerk –> kerken<\/em>).<\/p>\n 4. It is important that when you go back to the one syllable form that you remove the extra consonant that you added. In Dutch, you will never see any double consonants at the end of a word (except in a few loanwords).<\/p>\n
\nOpen Syllable<\/strong> = a syllable that ends in a vowel<\/p>\n\n