Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "in" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce in in Dutch?

in is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɪn/. It means “in.” Same as the English word "in" — one of the few Dutch words you can say without adjusting anything.

Same as the English word "in" — one of the few Dutch words you can say without adjusting anything.

in /ɪn/

Unstressed as a preposition, it clings to the following noun phrase and takes no beat of its own. It does take stress when it functions as a separable verb prefix — "ik ga naar binnen" versus "ik kom in" — but as a plain preposition it stays flat.

Listen: in

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Sound it out

i The vowel of English "tin," and Dutch keeps it noticeably tighter and shorter than the long "ie" spelling would give.

n A clean final n. Because the word is unstressed, it often blends straight into the next word's opening sound.

Hear it in a sentence

Ik woon in Nederland.

I live in the Netherlands.

Listen: Ik woon in Nederland.

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"Ik woon in Nederland" uses "in" for a country, which is the same preposition English chooses, so the phrase is easy. The stress pattern is worth noting though: "Nederland" has the beat on the first syllable, NAY-der-land, and "in" simply leans onto it.

Where English speakers slip

There is little to get wrong phonetically, which is exactly why learners over-articulate it, giving a small function word the weight of a content word. The real trouble is choosing it: Dutch distributes "in," "op" and "aan" quite differently from English, and translating "in" word-for-word produces sentences that are pronounced perfectly but sound wrong.