The Vowel Between 'Bet' and 'Bat' That Dutch Doesn't Have
Dutch vowels don't include this exact open, front sound — so it's easy to accidentally say 'bet' when you mean 'bat.'
Dutch has a rich vowel system, but it's missing the specific low, front vowel English uses in words like 'cat,' 'bad,' and 'ran' — this sound sits between the vowels in 'bet' and 'father,' and it can be genuinely tricky to land precisely. Because of this gap, Dutch speakers often substitute a vowel closer to 'bet,' turning 'bat' into something closer to 'bet' or 'bad' into 'bed.' To make this vowel, drop your jaw quite low and spread your mouth wide, more than feels natural at first. Try these pairs slowly: bat/bet, cat/cot, ran/wren — notice how your jaw needs to drop lower for the first word in each pair. A two-minute exercise: say 'cat, bad, hat, ran' five times, exaggerating a wide, low jaw drop each time, almost like starting a yawn. This vowel takes real practice to feel natural, but once your mouth learns the shape, it sticks — keep at it!
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Sources (1)
- Is there adaptation of speech production after speech perception in bilingual interaction? — Wouter P J Broos, Aster Dijkgraaf, Eva Van Assche et al., 2019
- Dutch-English bilinguals adapted their production of the coda phoneme /b/ to match native English input but failed to adapt the vowel /æ/.
- The presence or absence of a native English confederate did not significantly influence the observed adaptation effects.
- Native English speakers did not demonstrate consistent changes in speech production following exposure to L2 speaker phonemes.