Dutch · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "zien" in Dutch?

Q: How do you pronounce zien in Dutch?

zien is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /zin/. It means “to see.” seen — a long "ee" with a barely-voiced z at the front. One syllable.

seen — a long "ee" with a barely-voiced z at the front. One syllable.

zien /zin/

Another of the short infinitives where the ending has fused into the stem, alongside "doen," "gaan" and "staan." These verbs behave rhythmically like nouns rather than like the two-syllable "-en" verbs, which is useful when they land at the end of a clause and have to carry the closing beat.

Listen: zien

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Sound it out

z Weakly voiced in the northern standard, close enough to s that many English ears cannot distinguish them at the start of a word.

ie High front and tense, with the tongue close to the roof of the mouth throughout.

n Tongue tip on the ridge and fully articulated. This is a one-syllable infinitive, so there is no schwa here to swallow.

Hear it in a sentence

Ik zie je morgen.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Listen: Ik zie je morgen.

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"Ik zie je morgen" uses the present tense for a future arrangement, as Dutch normally does, and the stem "zie" drops the n. The unstressed "je" sits between two content words, so the melody moves from ZIE straight to MOR-gen.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers give the z its full buzz and then read "ie" as the diphthong of "pie," landing on "zine." Both need correcting: soften the z toward s and flatten the vowel to a plain "ee." There is also a listening problem — "zien" and "zijn" differ only in the vowel, and beginners routinely mishear one for the other.