Whether you’re ordering a large amount of stroopwafel or figuring out how many canals in Amsterdam you need to cross to get to your destination, knowing how to count to 100 in Dutch can come in handy. Numbers come up in a number of contexts, and it’s easy to gloss over them when you’re learning a new language. To help you get started, we created this guide to the Dutch numbers.

We could just spell out all of the numbers from zero to 100, but we didn’t! Why? While rote memorization can be a useful tool in some parts of language learning, numbers are a place where you can figure out the different parts and assemble them into numbers. After all, you didn’t learn the numbers in English by memorizing everything from one to infinity: there were patterns you learned so you could make any number you wanted. We’ll start by giving you zero through 20 — admittedly, you do have to memorize these — then the rest of the tens, and then explain how it all fits together.

@babbel

Now you know a few basic words and phrases that might come in handy on your next trip to Amsterdam #learndutch #polyglot #bilingual #learnalanguage #languagelearning #languagelearner #teachme #babbel #netherlands #dutch #amsterdam #visitamsterdam #thenetherlands

original sound – Babbel

Learn To Count In Dutch

The Numbers From  0 To 20

Like many languages, the tens in Dutch are a bit irregular. In Dutch, 11 is elf, 12 is twaalf, and it isn’t until the number 15 that they all fall into a logical pattern of adding -tien on the end. You’ll have to memorize at least up to 20 to have the numbers really make sense, though.

zero — nul
one — één
two — twee
three — drie
four — vier
five — vijf
six — zes
seven — zeven
eight — acht
nine — negen
ten — tien
eleven — elf
twelve — twaalf
thirteen — dertien
fourteen — veertien
fifteen — vijftien
sixteen — zestien
seventeen — zeventien
eighteen — achttien
nineteen — negentien
twenty — twintig

The Rest Of The Tens In Dutch

thirty — dertig
forty — veertig
fifty — vijftig
sixty — zestig
seventy — zeventig
eighty — tachtig
ninety — negentig
(one) hundred — honderd

How Do Dutch Numbers Work?

Dutch has a pretty straightforward system for naming numbers beyond 20. You simply have the single-digit term (one through nine), then the Dutch word for “and” (en), and then the tens term. The number 79, for example, would be negenenzeventig (which is essentially “nine and seventy”).

The one slight adjustment in spelling that needs to be made is that if the singles place ends in a vowel (twee and drie), the word en gets a diaeresis: ën. So 32 would be tweeëndertig, and 43 would be drieënveertig. Also, when the number “one” (één) is added, it loses the accents, making eighty-one just eenentachtig, for example.

Counting Beyond 100 In Dutch

Once you get into the hundreds, you just add the hundreds place to the beginning, so 132 is honderdtweeëndertig. Getting to more than one hundred is as easy as adding a number to the beginning, so 232 is tweehonderdtweeëndertig, 332 is driehonderdtweeëndertig and so on.

When you get over a thousand (zuisend) the pattern continues (2,000 is tweezuisend, 9,000 is negenzuisend), but it’s common to add spaces into the number to make it clearer. Writing zevenhonderd tweeënveertigduizend negenhonderd zesentachtig is a bit clearer than zevenhonderdtweeënveertigduizendnegenhonderdzesentachtig, though at that point you might be better off writing 742,986.

Once you’ve got these basics down, you’ll be able to count to 100 (and higher) in Dutch! And if you want to keep going, you can start learning more elements of the Dutch language.