Learn Dutch: Het bed is groot.

In this sentence, groot ends in a consonant, making the syllable closed. To keep the long O sound, we must write two O's. When we add an -e ending (like in het grote bed), the syllable splits before the consonant (gro-te). Because the syllable now ends in a vowel (an open syllable), we drop one o to follow the spelling rules, but still pronounce it as a long O.

Since bed is a het word, shouldn't the adjective get an -e ending?

Adjectives only get an -e ending when they come directly before the noun they describe (like het grote bed, meaning 'the big bed'). In this sentence, groot comes after the verb is. When an adjective is used after a verb like this, it stays in its basic form and never gets an -e.

How is the 'd' at the end of bed pronounced?

In Dutch, whenever a word ends in a d, that letter is pronounced like a 't'. So bed sounds a lot like the English word 'bet'. If you make it plural (bedden), the d is no longer at the very end of the word, so it sounds like a regular 'd' again.

Is there a rule to know that bed uses het instead of de?