The 1,000 Most Common Dutch Words

Ranked by real-world frequency. Study all of them free with spaced repetition.

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The 1,000 Most Common Dutch Words: the list

Tips for learning Dutch words

• Master zijn and hebben before anything else: besides meaning 'to be' and 'to have', they work as auxiliary verbs in the perfect tenses, so shaky recall here slows everything else down.
• Modal verbs such as kunnen, willen, moeten and zullen rarely stand alone in real speech, so drill them paired with a second verb (as in 'I want to go') to get used to the word order.
• Practise niet inside full sentences rather than on its own, since where it sits in the clause depends on what is being negated.
• Short adverbs such as dan, nog, al and ook are reused constantly and carry a lot of nuance; collect a couple of example sentences for each instead of relying on a single English gloss.
• Practise by typing the Dutch word from the English prompt rather than the reverse: production is harder than recognition, and typed answers catch spelling slips early, especially double vowels.
• Note irregular verbs as patterns rather than one-offs: zien, komen and doen already show the kind of vowel changes you will meet again in other common Dutch verbs.