Pronunciation of Dutch vowels, consonants and letter combinations

• Ui
• Ei
• Links

UI

On this page you can see a few pictures of the mouth positions necessary to produce this sound.

I will translate the explanation over there.

What you should do with your mouth

The mouth goes from open to half open, but it's shape remains round.

The sound is produced in the middle of the mouth.

Contrast with OE

'oe' is pronounced exactly identical to the 'u' in a Chinese character like 录.

The difference between 'ui' and 'oe' is that in 'ui' the mouth is broader, and in 'oe' the mouth is more round.

EI/IJ

Basically the pronunciation of 'ei' and 'ij' is completely the same. But there are a lot of words where 'ij', especially at the end, is pronounced differently. In this section I will only focus on the 'ei'-sound.

On this page you can see a few pictures of the mouth positions necessary to produce this sound.

I will translate the explanation over there, although I don't think that's a completely correct 'ei'-sound. But at the moment I have no better alternatives.

What you should do with your mouth

The mouth opens.

The the mouth closes a little, until it's half open.

The sound is produced in the middle of the mouth.

Making the sound using other sounds

The sound is a combination of the 'e' in met, and the 'ie' in hier (or die).
(The 'ie'-sound is similar to the Chinese 一.)

Links