Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "vies" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce vies in Dutch?

vies is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /vis/. It means “dirty.” fees — softly-voiced v, a long "ee," and a clean s. It rhymes with "peace."

fees — softly-voiced v, a long "ee," and a clean s. It rhymes with "peace."

vies /vis/

Two fricative-ish consonants bracket a long vowel in a single beat. In "vieze" the s becomes a genuine voiced z between vowels — the same sound would change, which is why Dutch spells the inflected form with a z.

Listen: vies

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Sound it out

v Half-devoiced in the northern standard, landing between English f and v. Start it breathy and let voicing arrive late.

ie The reliable digraph again: always "ee," never two sounds, no matter what the surrounding letters suggest.

s Voiceless and hissing at the end. Since the initial v is barely voiced, the word's two edges nearly match in quality.

Hear it in a sentence

Mijn handen zijn vies.

My hands are dirty.

Listen: Mijn handen zijn vies.

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"Mijn handen zijn vies" uses the plural verb "zijn" and the plural noun "handen," whose -en ending reduces to a schwa. So the sentence has three weak syllables in the middle before landing firmly on the adjective at the end.

Where English speakers slip

The spelling suggests "vice" or "vys" to an English eye, both wrong — the digraph ie is simply "ee." Learners also give the v a full English buzz. And there is a spelling shift to watch: the adjective is "vies" but the inflected form is "vieze," with the s turning into a z, which catches people out in writing.