How To Count To 100 In Dutch

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? Numbers are made of constituent parts, so it’s better to learn the parts and how they fit together rather than the whole. Thus, we’ll start by giving you zero through 20, then the rest of the tens, and then explain how it all fits together.

Learn To Count To 100 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

Putting It All Together

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”). Once you get into the hundreds, you just add the hundreds place to the beginning, so 132 is honderdtweeëndertig.

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 one (één) is added on, it loses the accents, making eighty-one just eenentachtig.

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