Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "acht" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce acht in Dutch?

acht is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɑxt/. It means “eight.” AHKHT — an open "ah" followed by the harsh Dutch ch and a final t, all in one syllable.

AHKHT — an open "ah" followed by the harsh Dutch ch and a final t, all in one syllable.

acht /ɑxt/

Vowel, fricative and stop packed together with nothing to lean on — a dense single beat. Dutch is comfortable ending words with clusters like this, and the whole thing still occupies one beat no matter how many consonants are stacked into it.

Listen: acht

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Sound it out

a Short, open, and produced far back — closer to the vowel in "father" than to the a of "cat," but cut off fast by what follows.

ch Identical to the Dutch g: a sustained velar rasp made by narrowing the gap between the back of the tongue and the soft palate. Never the "tch" of "church" or the "k" of "school."

t A quiet final stop released immediately after the friction stops. The ch and t belong to the same syllable, with no vowel between them.

Hear it in a sentence

De winkel opent om acht uur.

The store opens at eight.

Listen: De winkel opent om acht uur.

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"De winkel opent om acht uur" puts "acht" right before "uur," which means the ch friction has to stop cleanly before a vowel begins. That transition — rasping fricative straight into an open vowel — is one of the harder junctions in beginner Dutch and worth drilling on this phrase alone.

Where English speakers slip

The near-universal substitution is a k: "ahkt," borrowing from English words like "ache" or German-influenced guesses. A k is a stop that seals the airflow; Dutch ch keeps the air flowing and scraping. Learners also sometimes insert a vowel to make the cluster easier, saying "ah-khut," which adds a syllable the word does not have.