Vowel length is always indicated but in different ways by using an intricate system of single and double letters.
Historical overview Old Dutch possessed phonemic consonant length in addition to phonemic vowel length, with no correspondence between them. Thus, long vowels could appear in closed syllables, and short vowels could occur in open syllables. In the transition to early
Middle Dutch, short vowels were lengthened when they stood in open syllables. Short vowels could now occur only in closed syllables. Consonants could still be long in pronunciation and acted to close the preceding syllable. Therefore, any short vowel that was followed by a long consonant remained short. The spelling system used by early Middle Dutch scribes accounted for that by indicating the vowel length only when it was necessary (sometimes by doubling the vowel but also in other ways). As the length was implicit in open syllables, it was not indicated there, and only a single vowel was written. Long consonants were indicated usually by doubling the consonant letter, which meant that a short vowel was always followed by at least two consonant letters or by just one consonant at the end of a word. Later in Middle Dutch, the distinction between short and long consonants started to disappear. That made it possible for short vowels to appear in open syllables once again. Because there was no longer a phonetic distinction between single and double consonants (they were both pronounced short now), Dutch writers started to use double consonants to indicate that the preceding vowel was short even when the consonant had not been long in the past. That eventually led to the modern Dutch spelling system.
Checked and free vowels Modern Dutch spelling still retains many of the details of the late Middle Dutch system. The distinction between
checked and free vowels is important in Dutch spelling. A checked vowel is one that is followed by a consonant in the same syllable (the syllable is closed) while a free vowel ends the syllable (the syllable is open). This distinction can apply to pronunciation or spelling independently, but a syllable that is checked in pronunciation will always be checked in spelling as well (except in some unassimilated loanwords). • Checked in neither: ("to leave", "to let") • Checked in spelling only: ("laths") • Checked in both: ("lath"), ("little lath") A single vowel that is checked in
neither is always long/tense. A vowel that is checked in
both is always short/lax. The following table shows the pronunciation of the same three-letter sequence in different situations, with hyphens indicating the syllable divisions in the written form, and the IPA period to indicate them in the spoken form: Free is fairly rare and is mostly confined to loanwords and names, since in native words /i(ː)/ is usually written as . As tense is rare except before , free is likewise rare except before . The same rule applies to word-final vowels, which are always long because they are not followed by any consonant (but see below on ). Short vowels, not followed by any consonant, do not normally exist in Dutch, and there is no normal way to indicate them in the spelling.
Double vowels and consonants When a vowel is short/lax but is free in pronunciation, the spelling is made checked by doubling the following consonant, so that the vowel is kept short according to the default rules. That has no effect on pronunciation, as modern Dutch does not have long consonants: •
ram-men ("rams, to ram") •
tel-len ("to count") •
tin-nen ("made of tin") •
kop-pen ("cups, heads, to head [a ball]") •
luk-ken ("to succeed") When a vowel is long/tense but still checked in pronunciation, it is necessarily checked in spelling as well. A change is thus needed to indicate the length, which is done by doubling the vowel. Doubled does not occur. • ("window"),
raam-de ("estimated") • ("cultivate"),
teel-de ("cultivated") • ("buy, sale"),
koop-sel ("something bought") • (a name) ====== A single indicates short and long e but is also used to indicate the neutral schwa sound in unstressed syllables. Because the schwa is always short, is never followed by a double consonant when it represents . •
ap-pe-len ("apples") •
ge-ko-men ("(has) come") •
kin-de-ren ("children") A word-final long is written (or in some loanwords), as an exception to the normal rules. That means that a word-final single will almost always represent a schwa. • (expression of woe), ("you") • ("along, with"), ("me") • ("contraction of the
womb"), ("
we") • Exception: (city name; formerly
Enschedé) Because the position of the stress in a polysyllabic word is not indicated in the
spelling, that can lead to
ambiguity. Some pairs of words are spelled identically, but represents either stressed or or unstressed , depending on how the stress is placed. •
be-de-len ("to beg") or ("to impart with, to grant ") •
ver-gaan-de ("far-going, far-reaching") or ("perishing")
Morphological alternations The length of a vowel generally does not change in the pronunciation of different forms of a word. However, in different forms of a word, a syllable may alternate between checked and free depending on the syllable that follows. The spelling rules nonetheless follow the simplest representation, writing double letters only when necessary. Consequently, some forms of the same word may be written with single letters while others are written with double letters. Such alternations commonly occur between the singular and plural of a noun or between the infinitive and the conjugated forms of verbs. Examples of alternations are shown below. Note that free is spelled in native words: There are some irregular nouns that change their vowel from short/lax in the singular to long/tense in the plural. Their spelling does not alternate between single and double letters. However, the sound becomes in the plural of such nouns instead of , which is reflected in the spelling. • ("day"),
da-gen ("days") • ("city, town"),
ste-den ("cities, towns") • ("road, way"),
we-gen ("roads, ways") • ("ship"),
sche-pen ("ships") • ("lottery ticket"),
lo-ten ("lottery tickets")
Exceptions As a rule, the simplest representation is always chosen. A double vowel is never written in an open syllable, and a double consonant is never written at the end of a word or when next to another consonant. A double vowel is rarely followed by a double consonant, as it could be simplified by writing them both single. The past tense of verbs may have a double vowel, followed by a double consonant, to distinguish those forms from the present tense. •
ha-ten ("hate"),
haat-ten ("hated"), both •
ra-den ("guess"),
raad-den ("guessed"), both Compounds should be read as if each word were spelled separately, and they may therefore appear to violate the normal rules. That may sometimes cause confusion if the word is not known to be a compound. •
dag-ar-bei-der or more fluently ("day labourer"), a compound of ("day") + ("labourer") so it is not divided as
*da-gar-bei-der . If it were not a compound, it would be written
*dag-gar-bei-der to keep the first "a" short. •
een-en-twin-tig ("twenty-one"), a compound of ("one") + ("and") + ("twenty"). If it were not a compound, it would be written
*e-nen-twin-tig to avoid having a double vowel at the end of a syllable. •
mee-doen ("to participate"), a compound of ("along (with)") + ("do"). If it were not a compound, it would be written
*me-doen to avoid having a double vowel at the end of a syllable. The word itself has a double vowel because of the exception with final -, as noted above. ==Final devoicing and the'' 't kofschip'' rule==