Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "aardig" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce aardig in Dutch?

aardig is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈaːrdəx/. It means “nice / kind.” AHR-duhkh — long open "aah" under the stress, and the -ig ending is a schwa plus the harsh fricative.

AHR-duhkh — long open "aah" under the stress, and the -ig ending is a schwa plus the harsh fricative.

aardig /ˈaːrdəx/

With the -ig suffix guaranteed weightless, the accent falls at the front. That suffix is a reliable signpost throughout Dutch: wherever you see it, the beat is somewhere to its left, usually on the root's first syllable.

Listen: aardig

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Sound it out

aa Roughly twice the length of a short a, and it needs every bit of that to carry the stress.

rd A light r into a voiced d. The d stays voiced here because a vowel follows it in the next syllable.

-ig The standard adjective suffix, said /əx/: neutral schwa plus the velar scrape. It never sounds like English "-ig" and never takes stress.

Hear it in a sentence

Jouw vriend is aardig.

Your friend is nice.

Listen: Jouw vriend is aardig.

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"Jouw vriend is aardig" uses the emphatic possessive "jouw" rather than the everyday "je," which puts a little weight on whose friend it is. The adjective closes the sentence, so the fricative of the suffix is the last sound a listener hears.

Where English speakers slip

The suffix is where this goes wrong: English speakers say "-ig" with a hard g, producing "AR-dig." It is "-uhkh," a schwa plus a scrape. The long aa also gets shortened, and the r gets the American treatment, which together turn the stressed syllable into something closer to "ard" than "aahr."