Dutch phonology

Phonology of the Dutch language

Dutch phonology is similar to that of other West Germanic languages, especially Afrikaans and West Frisian. Standard Dutch has two main de facto pronunciation standards: Northern and Belgian. Northern Standard Dutch is the most prestigious accent in the Netherlands. It is associated with high status, education and wealth. Although its speakers seem to be concentrated mainly in the densely populated Randstad area in the provinces of North Holland, South Holland and Utrecht, it is often impossible to tell where in the country its speakers were born or raised and so it cannot be considered a regional dialect in the Netherlands. Belgian Standard Dutch is used by the vast majority of Flemish journalists and it is sometimes called VRT Nederlands ("VRT Dutch"; formerly BRT Nederlands "BRT Dutch"), after VRT, the national public broadcaster for the Flemish Region.

The glottal stop is not a phoneme because it only occurs optionally in a few specific, predictable environments. It often occurs at the beginning of vowel initial words after a pause. The glottal stop can also separate vowel articulations within words, such as in IQ onderzoek, milieu imago, toe eigenen, coöperatie, and beaam. This is particularly common in the case of compounds where both elements have the same vowel at the syllable boundary, examples being hippie ideaal, mee eten, glijijzer, bui uitdoving, kilo ohm, trouwauto, and na apen. Apart from , all alveolar consonants are laminal and can be realized as denti alveolar in Belgium. and are fully voiced. is not a native phoneme of Dutch and occurs only in loanwords, like goal ('goal'); however is nevertheless analyzed as a phoneme because minimal pairs exist—e. g. goal and kool ('cabbage'). Additionally, in native words, occurs as an allophone of when it undergoes regressive voicing assimilation, like in zakdoek In the north, often devoices and merges with ; the quality of that merged sound has been variously described as a voiceless post velar or uvular fricative. In the south, the distinction between and is generally preserved as velar or post palatal Some southern speakers may alternate between the velar and post palatal articulation, depending on the backness of the preceding or succeeding vowel. Post velar and uvular variants are called harde g "hard g", while the post palatal and velar variants are called zachte g "soft g". There is also a third variant called zwakke harde g "weak hard g", in which is realized as and is realized as and is used in Zeeland and West Flanders, which are h dropping areas, so that does not merge with glottal variants of and In the Netherlands, can devoice and merge with According to , there are hardly any speakers of Northern Standard Dutch who consistently contrast with In low prestige varieties of Netherlandic Dutch (such as the Amsterdam accent) also can devoice and merge with Speakers who devoice and may also hypercorrectively voice and : concert "concert" may thus be compared to the more usual Some speakers pronounce as a voiceless Some dialects, particularly those from the southwest, exhibit h dropping. In the Netherlands, and may have only mid to low pitched friction, and for many Netherlandic speakers, they are retracted. In Belgium, they are more similar to English The sequences and are often assimilated to palatalized , alveolo palatal , postalveolar or similar realizations. The onset sequence is commonly realized as a tenuis alveolo palatal affricate , or intervocalically as a stop or fricative , barring some loanwords and names. The onset sequence is commonly realized as a tenuis alveolo palatal affricate or intervocalically as a stop or fricative , barring some loanwords and names. Before , is realized as a voiceless post palatal affricate are not native phonemes of Dutch and usually occur only in borrowed words, like show and bagage "baggage". Depending on the speaker and the position in the word, they may or may not be distinct from the assimilated realizations of the clusters If they are not distinct, they will have the same range of realizations noted above. Unlike English and German, in Dutch the voiceless stops are unaspirated in all positions: English tip and German Tipp are both , but Dutch tip is with an unaspirated .

Dutch devoices all obstruents at the ends of words, which is partly reflected in the spelling. The voiced "z" in plural huizen becomes huis ('house') in singular. Also, duiven becomes duif ('dove'). The other cases are always written with the voiced consonant, but a devoiced one is actually pronounced: the "d" in plural baarden is retained in singular spelling baard ('beard'), but the pronunciation of the latter is , and plural ribben has singular rib ('rib'), pronounced
Because of assimilation, the initial of the next word is often also devoiced: het vee ('the cattle') is The opposite may be true for other consonants: ik ben ('I am') .

Dutch has an extensive vowel inventory consisting of thirteen plain vowels and at least three diphthongs. Vowels can be grouped as front unrounded, front rounded, central and back. They are also traditionally distinguished by length or tenseness. The vowels are included in one of the diphthong charts further below because Northern Standard Dutch realizes them as diphthongs, but they behave phonologically like the other long monophthongs.

is close to the canonical value of the IPA symbol The Standard Belgian realization has also been described as close mid In regional Standard Dutch, the realization may be different: for example, in Antwerp it is closer, more like , whereas in places like Dordrecht, Nijmegen, West and East Flanders the vowel is typically more open than the Standard Dutch counterpart, more like Affected speakers of Northern Standard Dutch may also use this vowel. are close front , close to cardinal The majority of sources consider to be close mid central , yet Beverley Collins and Inger Mees consider it to be close mid front The study conducted by Vincent van Heuven and Roos Genet has shown that native speakers consider the canonical IPA value of the symbol to be the most similar to the Dutch sound, much more similar than the canonical values of and (the sound represented by was not a part of the study). , and The starting points of tend to be closer in Belgian Standard Dutch than in Northern Standard Dutch In addition, the Belgian Standard Dutch realization of tends to be fully rounded, unlike the typical Northern Standard Dutch realization of the vowel. However, Jo Verhoeven reports rather open starting points of the Belgian Standard Dutch variants of and so the main difference between Belgian and Northern Standard Dutch in this respect may only be in the rounding of the first element of , but the fully rounded variant of is also used by some Netherlandic speakers, particularly of the older generation. It is also used in most of Belgium, in line with the Belgian Standard Dutch realization. In conservative Northern Standard Dutch, the starting points of are open mid and rounded in the case of the last two vowels: The backness of the starting point of the Belgian Standard Dutch realization of has been variously described as front and centralized front In Polder Dutch, which is spoken in some areas of the Netherlands (especially Randstad and its surroundings), the starting points of are further lowered to This is typically accompanied by the lowering of the starting points of to These realizations have existed in Hollandic dialects since the 16th century and are now are becoming standard in the Netherlands. They are an example of a chain shift similar to the Great Vowel Shift in English. According to Jan Stroop, the fully lowered variant of is the same as the phonetic diphthong , making bij 'at' and baai 'bay' perfect homophones. The rounding of the starting point of the Northern Standard Dutch realization of has been variously described as slight and non existent The unrounded variant has also been reported to occur in many other accents, such as Leiden, Rotterdam and in some Belgian speakers. Phonetically, the endpoints of the native diphthongs are lower and more central than cardinal , i. e. more like or even (however, Jo Verhoven reports a rather close endpoints of the Belgian Standard Dutch variant of , so this might be somewhat variable). In Belgian Standard Dutch, the endpoints are shorter than in Northern Standard Dutch, but in both varieties the glide is an essential part of the articulation. Furthermore, in Northern Standard Dutch there is no appreciable difference between the endpoints of and the phonetic diphthongs , with both sets ending in vowels close to In some regional varieties of Standard Dutch (Southern, regional Belgian), the endpoints of are even lower than in Standard Dutch: , and in the traditional dialect of The Hague they are pure monophthongs Broad Amsterdam speakers can also monophthongize , but to It typically does not merge with as that vowel has a rather back realization in Amsterdam. While occur only in Northern Standard Dutch and regional Netherlands Standard Dutch, all varieties of Standard Dutch have phonetic diphthongs Phonemically, they are considered to be sequences of by Geert Booij and as monosyllabic sequences by Beverley Collins and Inger Mees (they do not comment on and ). This article adopts the former analysis. In Northern Standard Dutch, the second elements of can be labiodental This is especially common in intervocalic positions. In Northern Standard Dutch and regional Netherlands Standard Dutch, the close mid elements of may be subject to the same kind of diphthongization as , so they may be actually triphthongs with two closing elements ( can instead be , a closing diphthong followed by ). In Rotterdam, can be phonetically , with a central starting point. is realized with more prominence on the first element according to Booij and with equal prominence on both elements according to Collins and Mees. Other diphthongs have more prominence on the first element. The endpoints of these diphthongs tend to be slightly more central than cardinal They tend to be higher than the endpoints of the phonemic diphthongs .

Most native Germanic words (the bulk of the core vocabulary) are stressed on the root syllable, which is usually the first syllable of the word. Germanic words may also be stressed on the second or later syllable if certain unstressed prefixes are added (particularly in verbs). Non root stress is common in loanwords, which are generally borrowed with the stress placement unchanged. Secondary stress may also be present in polysyllabic words. Certain prefixes and suffixes will receive secondary stress: , The stressed syllable of a word receives secondary stress within a compound word: ,
The vast majority of compound nouns are stressed on the first element: appeltaart , luidspreker The word boeren generally takes secondary stress in compounds: boerenkool , boerenland Some compounds formed from two words are stressed on the second element: stadhuis , rijksdaalder In some cases the secondary stress in a compound shifts to preserve a trochaic pattern: eiland , but schateiland Compounds formed from two compound words tend to follow the same rules. But in compounds formed of more than two words the stress is irregular. While stress is phonemic, minimal pairs are rare, and marking the stress in written Dutch is always optional, but it is sometimes recommended to distinguish homographs that differ only in stress. It is common practice to distinguish een (indefinite article) from één (the cardinal number one), but the distinction is not so much about stress as it is about the pronunciation of the vowel ( versus ), and while the former is always unstressed, the latter may or may not be stressed. Stress also distinguishes some verbs, as stress placement on prefixes also carries a grammatical distinction, such as in vóórkomen ('to occur') and voorkómen ('to prevent'). In vóórkomen and other verbs with a stressed prefix, the prefix is separable and separates as kom voor in the first person singular present, with the past participle vóórgekomen. On the other hand, verbs with an unstressed prefix are not separable: voorkómen becomes voorkóm in the first person singular present, and voorkómen in the past participle, without the past participle prefix ge
Dutch, like other Germanic languages, has a strong stress accent and uses stress timing because of its relatively complex syllable structure. It has a preference for trochaic rhythm, with relatively stronger and weaker stress alternating between syllables in such a way that syllables with stronger stress are produced at a more or less constant pace. Generally, each alternate syllable before and after the primary stress will receive relative stress, as far secondary stress placements allow: Wá. gə. nì. ngən. Relative stress preferably does not fall on so syllables containing may disrupt the trochaic rhythm. To restore the pattern, vowels are often syncopated in speech: kín. də. rən > , há. ri. ngən > , vər. gə. líj. king > In words for which the secondary stress is imposed lexically onto the syllable immediately following the stressed syllable, a short pause is often inserted after the stressed syllable to maintain the rhythm to ensure that the stressed syllable has more or less equal length to the trochaic unit following it: bóm mèl. ding, wéér lò. zə. Historically, the stress accent has reduced most vowels in unstressed syllables to , as in most other Germanic languages. This process is still somewhat productive, and it is common to reduce vowels to in syllables carrying neither primary nor secondary stress, particularly in syllables that are relatively weakly stressed due to the trochaic rhythm. Weakly stressed long vowels may also be shortened without any significant reduction in vowel quality. For example, politie (phonemically ) may be pronounced , or even .

The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) As with English, there exist many words that begin with three consonants, such as straat (street). Words that end in four consonants are mostly superlative adjectives.

Voiced consonants appear only in loan words: jazz. appears alone, preceded by or , or followed by , , or a combination of these. does not occur before labials and dorsals, does not occur before labials and does not occur before dorsals. cannot follow long vowels or diphthongs. cannot occur after diphthongs. , and do not occur.

The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun.

The phonetic transcription illustrates a Western Netherlandic, educated, middle generation speech and a careful colloquial style.

De noordenwind en de zon hadden een discussie over de vraag wie van hun tweeën de sterkste was, toen er juist iemand voorbijkwam die een dikke, warme jas aanhad.

The phonetic transcription illustrates the speech of a highly educated 45 year old male who speaks Belgian Dutch with a very slight regional Limburg accent.

De noordenwind en de zon waren ruzie aan het maken over wie het sterkste was toen er een reiziger voorbij kwam met een warme jas aan.