Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "bang" in Dutch?

bahng — an open back "ah" and a single velar nasal with no hard g after it.

bang /bɑŋ/

A nasal closes this beat. The inflected "bange" is where the rule matters: it stays "BANG-uh," never "BAN-guh," because a Dutch velar nasal does not sprout a stop when a vowel follows.

Listen: bang

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Sound it out

b A voiced stop with an unaspirated release.

a Open and produced toward the back of the mouth, and sealed by the nasal behind it.

ng One velar nasal, the sound ending English "sing." No separate g follows, and none appears in the inflected forms either.

Hear it in a sentence

Ik ben bang voor spinnen.

I'm scared of spiders.

Listen: Ik ben bang voor spinnen.

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"Ik ben bang voor spinnen" uses "voor" for the thing feared, which is the obligatory preposition — Dutch cannot say "ik ben bang spinnen." The plural "spinnen" ends in a reduced schwa, so the sentence trails off softly.

Where English speakers slip

Inserting a hard g into "bange" is the standard error, on the model of English "banger." Dutch keeps the nasal alone. Learners also front the vowel toward English "bang." And forgetting the preposition "voor" is the grammatical mistake that will actually cause confusion.