Numbers, time and dates in Dutch

Units first: tweeëntwintig

English puts the tens first, “twenty-two”; Dutch puts the units first and joins the two with en, “two and twenty”: eenentwintig, vijfendertig. Where two e’s meet, a diaeresis keeps them apart, as in “naïve”: tweeëntwintig, drieëndertig.

half vier is half past three

Dutch counts the half hour towards the hour that is coming: half vier is “half way to four”, 3.30. In British speech “half four” can mean 4.30, so the same two words point to different times. Say half vier and you mean 3.30 every time.

kwart voor vier: “to” is voor

On the clock “past” is over and “to” is voor: kwart over drie, kwart voor vier, tien over drie, vijf voor vier. voor here is literally “before”. naar is for going somewhere and has no place on the clock.

om vijf uur: “at” is om

A point on the clock takes om: om vijf uur, om half acht, om kwart over drie. The English “at” is bij or aan elsewhere, but never for the time of day.

3.20 is tien voor half vier

Between the quarters Dutch counts from the half: 3.20 is “ten before half four”, 3.40 is tien over half vier, “ten past half four”. twintig over drie is understood and is common in Flanders; in the Netherlands the form counted from the half hour is the usual one.

No “and”: honderdvijf

British English puts an “and” after the hundred; Dutch puts none there. Hundreds, tens and units run together: honderdvijf, driehonderdtweeënveertig. The en belongs only between units and tens.

honderd, not één honderd

English happily says “one hundred” and “one thousand”. Dutch says honderd and duizend on their own; the een is added only for a million: een miljoen. So 101 is honderdeen, with nothing in front of the hundred.

mei, not Mei: months in small letters

Months and days of the week are written with a small letter in Dutch: mei, maandag. Languages and nationalities have a capital, as in English: Nederlands, een Duitse auto.

drie mei: a date takes the cardinal number

Dutch says “three May”: drie mei, op drieëntwintig juli. There is an ordinal too, but only with the article and in a rather formal tone: de derde mei. Without the article derde mei is wrong.

de eerste, not de eenste

Three ordinals are learnt one by one: eerste, tweede, derde. After that the pattern is regular: vierde, vijfde up to nineteen, twintigste from twenty — with one exception, achtste.

Years in hundreds: “negentienhonderd…”

English splits 1905 into two pairs and reads the zero as “oh”. Dutch counts the hundreds: negentienhonderdvijf, “nineteen hundred five”, and negentienhonderdvierentachtig for 1984 — in quick speech often shortened to negentien vierentachtig, but never with a nul. From 2000 on the year is an ordinary number: tweeduizend vierentwintig.

tweeduizend vierentwintig, with a space

Up to a thousand a number is one word; after duizend comes a space: duizend tweehonderd, drieduizend vijf. And, as everywhere, there is no “and” after the thousand.

een miljard is a billion

Here the familiar word is a trap. A thousand million is a miljard; biljoen is a million millions, what English calls a trillion. After a number both stay in the singular: twee miljard, drie miljoen.

€ 1.250,50: comma and full stop swapped

Dutch uses a comma where English has the decimal point and a full stop to group the thousands. The euro sign comes before the amount, as the pound sign does, but with a space. You say twaalfhonderdvijftig euro vijftig, without cent.

de achtste, with st

Up to nineteen the ordinal takes -de, from twenty -ste — with one exception in the middle: achtste. The English “-th” gives no clue, and “eighth” has no d in it to copy.

de 3e: not 3rd

Where English writes “st”, “nd”, “rd” or “th” after the figure, Dutch writes e: de 3e verdieping, de 21e eeuw. 3de is also found; the English letters never are.