Questions & Answers about Ik slaap in het bed.
Why does slaap have two 'a's when the infinitive verb is slapen with only one?
This is the spelling rule for open and closed syllables in action! In the infinitive slapen (sla-pen), the 'a' is at the end of a syllable. This is called an open syllable, and a single vowel here automatically gets a long sound. When we form the 'I' form by dropping -en, we get slap. Because the syllable now ends in a consonant ('p'), a single 'a' would have a short sound. To keep the long 'a' sound, we must write a double vowel: slaap.
Why do we say het bed instead of de bed?
Dutch has two words for 'the': de and het. Bed is a neuter noun, which means it uses het. Because there is no strict rule to guess this, it is best to always learn the article together with the noun as a set pair.
Is the Dutch word bed pronounced exactly like the English word 'bed'?
Almost, but there is one important rule to remember. In Dutch, when the letter d is at the very end of a word, it is pronounced like a 't'. So, you should pronounce bed to sound like the English word 'bet'.
What happens if I want to talk about multiple beds? Does a spelling rule apply?
Yes! The plural of bed is bedden. When we add -en to make it plural, we have to double the d. If we didn't double it (making it beden), the first syllable would end in a vowel (be-den) and the 'e' would change to a long sound. We double the consonant to lock in the short 'e' sound from the singular word bed.
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