Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "de rekening" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce de rekening in Dutch?

de rekening is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /də ˈreːkənɪŋ/. It means “bill / check.” duh RAY-kuh-ning — beat on the first syllable, and the -ing ends in a velar nasal.

duh RAY-kuh-ning — beat on the first syllable, and the -ing ends in a velar nasal.

de rekening /də ˈreːkənɪŋ/

Front-stressed, with two weak syllables trailing behind. The -ing suffix is permanently unstressed in Dutch, exactly as in English, so a whole family of nouns — rekening, opleiding, vergadering — shares this same falling shape.

Listen: de rekening

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Sound it out

r A quick flick or soft scrape, kept brief so the long vowel behind it stays clean.

e Long and tense, stretched by the open syllable and carrying the primary stress.

ke A quiet k into a bare schwa — the weakest syllable in the word, passing almost without trace.

-ing A schwa plus a single velar nasal. Crucially there is no hard g after it, and no vowel between the n and the g — it is one sound, as in English "sing."

Hear it in a sentence

Mag ik de rekening?

Could I have the bill?

Listen: Mag ik de rekening?

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"Mag ik de rekening?" is a complete request with no verb beyond the modal, which Dutch allows in restaurants. The whole sentence has one real beat, on RE-, with everything before and after it light.

Where English speakers slip

Learners insert a hard g into the ending, giving "-ing-guh" on the model of English "finger." Dutch has only the nasal. They also give the middle syllable a real vowel when it should be a schwa, and they shorten the stressed "ay." The word is long enough that these small errors accumulate audibly.