The five Dutch phrases that do 80% of the work
First time? Do this
- Audio is built in. Tap any phrase to hear it in a native voice — pre-recorded and cached, so it just works offline, no setup. (The voice bar can still pick a phone voice as a backup.)
- Phrases — drilled by situation: the eetcafé, brown cafés, directions, the tram. Hit play, then say it back out loud.
- Sounds — nine letters unlock almost everything. Ten minutes here pays off the most.
- Customs — the unspoken rules. This is where tourists actually give themselves away.
- Practice — hear / read / recall / speak. Use it on the plane.
Right thing, right moment.
Tap a chip to jump to a scene — or just search. Common holds the go-anywhere basics (hello, thanks, where's the toilet); a few phrases like drinks live under more than one scene.
Common — useful everywhere · greetings · basics · the toilet
Greetings & manners · the social handshake
At the eetcafé (restaurant) · ordering & dining
eetcafé AYT-kah-fay — a pub that serves proper dinner, casual and cheap
In the bruin café · beers & nights out
bruin café brown kah-FAY — an old wood-panelled local pub, beer and conversation
Jenever & the borrel · tasting & toasting
Finding your way · asking directions
Trams, trains & bikes · getting around
Canals & ferries · life on the water
Shops & getting by · everyday
Sea, dunes & windmills · quick vocab
Numbers 1–100 · prices & ordering
Same alphabet, one sound from the throat.
Dutch spelling is honest — it tells you what to say once you know a handful of habits. The scraped g and the vowel in huis are the only two that need real practice; the rest sits closer to English than German does.
Knowing what a letter sounds like isn't the same as being able to make it. These five are where English mouths actually go wrong: what to do, what to stop doing, and a native recording you can slow down and copy.
What your mouth doesThe back of your tongue nearly closes against the soft palate and the air scrapes through — softer than clearing your throat, same place. It is everywhere: goed is "khoot", and gracht scrapes at both ends.
The mistakeAn English hard g. "good" for goed misses the one sound the language is famous for — commit to the scrape and the rest of the word forgives you.
What your mouth doesStart the "ow" of house, but push your lips forward and rounded while the tongue stays low — the sound comes out somewhere between "ow" and "ay": huis. It feels wrong the first ten times; that is the sign you are doing it right.
The mistakeSettling for "how" or "hoos". huis with a plain "ow" is a different (and to Dutch ears, comic) word — this vowel is worth the ten minutes.
What your mouth doesBoth are the same sound: start at the e of bed and glide up toward "ee" — close to the "ay" of may, but starting lower. ijs, de dijk — same vowel, either spelling.
The mistakeReading ij as "idge" or "ee-jay". The two letters are one vowel — Dutch even capitalises them together: IJsselmeer.
What your mouth doesoe is the plain oo of food, kept short: boek. eu is "ay" said with rounded lips: leuk. uu is "ee" with whistle-tight lips: huren. Three different mouths, three different vowels.
The mistakeUsing one all-purpose "oo" for all three. boek, leuk and huren each lose their identity — and Dutch has word pairs that differ on exactly this.
What your mouth doesNot "sh": an ordinary s followed straight away by the g-scrape. Schiphol is "S-KHIP-hol".
The mistake"SHIP-hol". Dutch has no "sh" of its own — the airport announcement will remind you every time.
- The g is the whole accent. g and ch are the same throat scrape — hard and rasping in Amsterdam, much softer below the rivers in Brabant and Limburg. Nobody expects a foreigner to land it; a breathy "h" is understood everywhere.
- Stress sits at the front — unless the word is borrowed. Dutch words stress the first syllable, and compounds stress the first half: FIETS-pad, KAAS-win-kel. Imports keep their own stress, which is why toilet, station and kapitein all land on the end.
- Endings get swallowed. Final -en loses its n: lopen is "LOH-puh", spreken is "SPRAY-kuh". And -ig and -lijk reduce to "-ikh" and "-luk" — gezellig, heerlijk.
- -tje shrinks half the language. The diminutive is said "chuh", and the Dutch attach it to nearly everything they order: biertje, kaartje, rondje, kopstootje. It signals friendliness, not size — asking for bier instead sounds oddly stern.
- Vowel length is spelled out, and a final d hardens to t. A doubled vowel is long, a single one in a closed syllable is short: maan vs man, zee vs zes. At the end of a word d is said as t — goed is "khoot", avond is "AH-vont".
The rules nobody prints on the menu.
Your Dutch rarely outs you. These do. Read once, and you'll move differently.
Greet first, then ask
A hallo (hah-LOH) or goedemiddag (khoo-duh-MID-dahkh) walking into a shop, bakery or café is expected, and so is a dag (dahkh) on the way out. Opening in English without it is the tourist tell.
Stay out of the fietspad
The red asphalt is a road, not a generous pavement. Cyclists have priority, ring once and do not slow down — stepping into it, or standing in it to take a photo, is the most dangerous habit visitors bring.
"Alleen pinnen" means your cash is no good
The country runs on debit cards, and plenty of cafés, bakeries and market stalls take no cash whatsoever. Foreign credit cards get refused surprisingly often — supermarkets especially — so carry a contactless debit card and ask Kan ik pinnen? (kahn ik PIN-nun) before you order.
Tipping: round up, never a ceremony
Service is included in the listed price. Rounding up, or leaving roughly 5–10% after a good dinner, reads as generous rather than obligatory, and for a coffee or a beer the coins are plenty. Splitting the bill to the cent is completely normal.
Gezellig is the word that explains the country
Gezellig (khuh-ZEL-lukh) covers cosy, convivial and companionable all at once — candles on the table, a small crowded café, good company, nobody in a hurry. It's the highest compliment a Dutch evening can earn.
A coffeeshop does not sell coffee
A coffeeshop (KOF-ee-shop) sells cannabis. Coffee is at a café (kah-FAY), a koffiehuis (KOF-ee-howss) or a bakery. In Amsterdam's old centre, smoking cannabis in the street is fined — what's bought there stays inside.
Directness is not rudeness
Expect flat, unpadded opinions, blunt prices and frank questions. It's meant as honesty and efficiency rather than aggression — and its flip side, doe maar normaal (doo mahr nor-MAAL, "just act normal"), is why showing off lands badly here.
Say yes to the borrel
Late-afternoon drinks with a borrelplank (BOR-rul-plahnk) of cheese, sausage and bitterballen (BIT-er-bah-len) is the standard Dutch social hour. Order a kopstootje (KOP-stoh-chuh) — a brimful jenever with a beer beside it, first sip taken with your hands behind your back.
Dinner is early and the kitchen closes
Lunch is a cold sandwich eaten quickly; dinner starts around six, and many kitchens stop taking orders by half nine. Arrive at nine expecting a full menu and you'll be eating bar snacks. Book ahead — the Dutch plan things.
Don't call the whole country Holland
Holland is two of the twelve provinces, and the government has promoted Nederland (NAY-der-lahnt) as the single name since 2020. Say it in Utrecht, Groningen or Maastricht and someone will correct you — cheerfully, but they will.
The plates and glasses worth going out of your way for — each with the name as you'd say it out loud.
Test the four channels.
Understanding Dutch by ear, reading, recall, and your own mouth. Quick rounds — do them twice.