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Questions & Answers about Het getal is een miljoen.
Why does the sentence use een miljoen without accents if the translation says "one million"?
In Dutch, the standard way to say "a million" or "one million" is simply een miljoen. You only add the accent marks (één miljoen) if you need to strongly emphasize that it is exactly one million and not two or three.
I thought the Dutch word for "number" was nummer. Why does this sentence use getal?
Dutch has two common words for "number". You use getal when talking about an amount, a math figure, or a quantity (like a million). You use nummer when the number is used as a label or in a sequence, like a phone number (telefoonnummer) or a house number (huisnummer).
How do I pronounce the end of miljoen?
The j makes a "y" sound, and the Dutch oe sounds very much like the "oo" in the English word "boot". Together, miljoen sounds roughly like "mill-YOON".
How do I know to use het instead of de for getal?
Getal is a neuter noun, meaning it must use het for "the". While you often just have to memorize this, there is a helpful trick: Dutch nouns that start with the prefix ge- are almost always het words!