Whether you’re ordering a large amount of stroopwafel, discussing prices at the coffee shop, exchanging phone numbers with your Netherlands vacation fling, 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. In you native language, it’s easy to take all the uses of numbers for granted, 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 in Dutch 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.
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Dutch Numbers From 1 To 10
Let’s start with the basic numbers from zero to ten.
zero — nul
one — één
two — twee
three — drie
four — vier
five — vijf
six — zes
seven — zeven
eight — acht
nine — negen
ten — tien
Dutch Numbers from 11 to 20
Like English numbers and numbers in 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.
eleven — elf
twelve — twaalf
thirteen — dertien
fourteen — veertien
fifteen — vijftien
sixteen — zestien
seventeen — zeventien
eighteen — achttien
nineteen — negentien
twenty — twintig
Multiples of 10 in Dutch
Dutch numbers 21 through 99 follow the same general pattern, but you’ll need to know the rest of the multiples of 10 to say large numbers.
thirty — dertig
forty — veertig
fifty — vijftig
sixty — zestig
seventy — zeventig
eighty — tachtig
ninety — negentig
(one) hundred — honderd
Using Dutch Numbers in Context
Dutch has a pretty straightforward system for naming numbers beyond 20. However, unlike in English, you have the last digit term (one through nine) first, then the Dutch word for “and” (en), and then the digit in the tens place. 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 (een), making twenty-one just eenentwintig (one-and-twenty), for example.
Ordinal Numbers in Dutch
In addition to learning the Dutch numbers, ordinal numbers could come in handy when you need to say dates or say where something is in a sequence, like first, second, and fourth. In Dutch, they are written by adding “-de” or “-ste” to the cardinal number. For example:
first — eerste
second — tweede
third — derde
fourth — vierde
fifth — vijfde
sixth — zesde
seventh — zevende
eighth — achtste
ninth — negende
tenth — tiende
eleventh — elfde
twelfth — twaalfde
thirteenth — dertiende
twentieth — twintigste
twenty-first — eenentwintigste
hundredth — honderdste
To shorten the ordinals, simply add a lowercase e after the numeral. 1st becomes 1e, 3rd becomes 3e, ninth becomes 9e, et cetera.
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.
Continue to Learn Dutch
Once you’ve got these basics down, you’ll be able to use numbers up to 100 in Dutch conversations! And if you want to keep going, you can start learning more elements of the Dutch language. You can build your vocabulary, practice pronunciation and grammar, and learn to have realistic conversations with Dutch speakers right on Babbel.