Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "gisteren" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce gisteren in Dutch?

gisteren is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈɣɪstərə(n)/. It means “yesterday.” KHIS-tuh-ruh — the harsh g up front, plain s, and two weak syllables trailing behind.

KHIS-tuh-ruh — the harsh g up front, plain s, and two weak syllables trailing behind.

gisteren /ˈɣɪstərə(n)/

Beat firmly on the first syllable, then two unstressed syllables tumbling after it. That three-syllable shape with everything after the first reduced is characteristic of Dutch, and English speakers tend to give the middle syllable more weight than it deserves.

Listen: gisteren

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Sound it out

g Raise the back of the tongue toward the soft palate and push air through until it rasps. This word opens on the hardest sound in Dutch.

i Brief even though it carries the stress — Dutch stress does not imply length, and the cluster behind it enforces the shortness.

st A clean hissing s into an unaspirated t. No "sht" anywhere in Dutch, including inside a word.

eren Two weak syllables in a row, both schwas, with the final n dropped — the word simply fades out rather than ending on anything definite.

Hear it in a sentence

Gisteren was ik thuis.

Yesterday I was at home.

Listen: Gisteren was ik thuis.

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"Gisteren was ik thuis" opens with the time word, which forces the verb into second position and pushes "ik" after it. That inversion is obligatory whenever a Dutch sentence starts with anything other than the subject, and the fronted time expression makes it especially visible here.

Where English speakers slip

A hard English g is what comes out nine times in ten. Keep the air scraping. Learners also stress the second syllable, producing "gis-TAIR-en" on the model of Romance languages, and they pronounce the ending fully rather than letting it dissolve. The result should trail off, not finish crisply.