Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "de avond" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce de avond in Dutch?

de avond is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /də ˈaːvɔnt/. It means “evening.” duh AH-vont — long open "aah" under the stress, and the final d comes out as a t.

duh AH-vont — long open "aah" under the stress, and the final d comes out as a t.

de avond /də ˈaːvɔnt/

The second syllable retains a full rounded vowel instead of collapsing — unusual for Dutch, and a sign that this element was once independent. "Vanavond" shifts the accent rightward while keeping the same root stress.

Listen: de avond

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

a Long and open, stretched because the syllable ends right after it. It opens the word with no consonant in front, so start cleanly on the vowel.

v Fully voiced here, sitting between two vowels — this is where a Dutch v gets its proper buzz, unlike at the start of a word.

ond Short rounded o, then n, then a d that devoices to t. The syllable is unstressed but keeps a real vowel rather than reducing to schwa.

Hear it in a sentence

Het was een leuke avond.

It was a nice evening.

Listen: Het was een leuke avond.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

"Het was een leuke avond" uses the past tense and the inflected "leuke," whose rounded eu vowel sits right before the long "aah" of "avond." Two very different vowels in immediate succession, which makes the phrase a useful drill.

Where English speakers slip

Spelling wins over sound here, and learners voice the closing d — it is a t. They also shorten the stressed vowel, and they sometimes reduce the second syllable to a schwa by analogy with words like "ochtend." Here the o keeps its rounding and its identity.