The pronunciation of Dutch infinitives and plurals varies. Though all infinitives and the majority of Dutch plurals end with -en, they have different pronunciations. These differences are based on the dialect.
Many Dutch plurals end with -en. Examples include huizen (houses), tassen (cups) and vrienden (friends). The infinitive marker is also -en. It appears in the infinitives drinken (drink), eten (eat) and schrijven (write).
In Belgium and the southern Netherlands, it is common to pronoun the -en of infinitives and plurals as a schwa and alveolar nasal. Unlike in the Dutch of cities such as Amsterdam and The Hague, the nasal is retained. The ending thus consists of two segments.
In the western and central Netherlands, it is common to drop the nasal and only pronounce the schwa. The result is that only one segment is articulated. The word-final nasal is not pronounced.
In the northern and eastern Netherlands, the nasal is retained but it is syllabic. This means that the schwa is not pronounced. The nasal is not in the syllable coda but in the nucleus.
In the western and central Netherlands the nasal is dropped, but in the northern and eastern Netherlands, the schwa is dropped. This affects the syllabification of infinitives and plurals. In those areas where the nasal is dropped, the word tassen (cups) can be syllabified tɑ.sə and in those areas where the nasal is syllabic, the same word can be syllabified to tɑs.n̩. The syllabic nasal forms its own syllable.
The infinitive marker and regular plural marker of Dutch is -en. This has three different pronunciations. They depend on the dialect. In Belgium and the southern Netherlands it consists of a schwa and nasal. In the western and central Netherlands, the nasal is not pronounced, and in the eastern and northern Netherlands the ending is realized as a syllabic nasal.
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