Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "nooit" in Dutch?

NOH-eet — a long "oh" gliding into "ee," then a final t. One syllable.

nooit /noːit/

A long beat, because the vowel has to travel from a rounded back position to a front one before the t arrives. Compare it with "niet": both negators, both one syllable, but this one takes noticeably more time to say.

Listen: nooit

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

Sound it out

n Standard n with the tongue tip up, released straight into the long diphthong.

ooi A three-letter vowel: long "oh" as the main body, then a rise toward "ee." The same combination appears in "mooi," so the two words rhyme exactly.

t An unaspirated final stop cutting the glide off cleanly.

Hear it in a sentence

Ik ben er nooit geweest.

I've never been there.

Listen: Ik ben er nooit geweest.

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

"Ik ben er nooit geweest" uses the perfect tense with "zijn" rather than "hebben" — Dutch picks the auxiliary by verb type, and verbs of motion and change take "zijn." The pronominal "er" is also obligatory here and cannot be dropped.

Where English speakers slip

Learners collapse the vowel into a single "oh" or read it as "noyt." It genuinely has two vowel positions and needs both. There is also a negation trap: "nooit" replaces "niet" entirely, so "ik ben niet nooit geweest" is a double negative Dutch does not allow, unlike some English dialects.