How many letters are in the Dutch alphabet?

The Dutch alphabet has the same 26 base Latin letters as English. There is no separate ñ or å. The complexity comes from the ij digraph and the trema marks, which are not counted as extra alphabet letters.

Is ij a single letter in Dutch?

It depends on the context. In sorting and pronunciation ij behaves like a single unit, and both letters are capitalised together as IJsland. Officially the Dutch alphabet still lists 26 letters, so ij is best described as a digraph with special handling.

What does the trema (ë, ï, ü) do?

The trema, or diaeresis, marks a new syllable when two vowels could otherwise be read as one sound. In coördinatie the ï shows that the two o's and the i are pronounced separately rather than as a single vowel combination.

Is ë a separate Dutch letter?

No. ë, ï, ö, and ü are ordinary vowels with a trema added for reading clarity. They are alphabetised together with the plain vowel and are not extra entries in the alphabet.

How is ij capitalised at the start of a word?

Both letters of the ij digraph are capitalised together. The country IJsland and the river IJssel start with a capital I and a capital J, never just a capital I followed by a lowercase j.

Dutch Alphabet Reference

Dutch uses the familiar 26-letter Latin alphabet, but two features trip up learners and software alike: the ij digraph, which behaves like a single letter for capitalisation and sorting, and the trema (ë, ï, ö, ü), which marks syllable boundaries rather than adding new letters. This reference lists every base letter with its Dutch name and explains both special cases.

How it works

The reference is built from three datasets:

The 26 base letters, each with its Dutch letter name (for example a, bee, cee, dee) and a sample word.
The ij digraph, shown as a special entry. In Dutch, ij is pronounced as one sound and is capitalised as a unit. Words like IJsland (Iceland) and IJssel start with both letters capitalised.
The trema vowels ë, ï, ö, ü. The trema (diaeresis) is placed on the second of two adjacent vowels to show they form separate syllables, as in coördinatie and geïnformeerd. These are not separate alphabet letters; they sort with their plain vowel.

The search box filters all rows so you can find a letter, a name, or an example quickly.

Example

The word coördinatie uses a trema on the o to separate the co syllable from the ord syllable. Without it, coordinatie could be misread with a single long oo sound. Similarly IJsland shows the ij digraph capitalised as a pair.

Notes

Loanwords may bring in accented letters like é (in café) or ç, but these are not part of the native Dutch alphabet.
When sorting Dutch text, treat trema vowels as their base vowel and decide per your locale whether ij collates as i+j or as a single y-adjacent unit; both conventions exist.

Dutch Alphabet Reference

Email me this result

How it works

Example

Notes