How to pronounce gezellig

It’s about the connection. The main difference between gezellig and hygge is that gezellig is more about the connection to a place and the people in it, rather than just a cosy atmosphere. The word gezellig derives from the word “gezel,” meaning companion or friend.

Around 1290 in the northern and eastern part of the Netherlands, the word was ‘duutsc’ and as the Frisian people (living in the North) spoke a language much more like English. The English adapted Dutch from Frisian Duutsc. Later, ‘duutsc’ became the Dutch word for their eastern neighbours Duits (German).

The letter “y” is also the only letter in the Dutch alphabet that is called by its name: “Griekse y (Greek y)” or ypsilon (after the Greek letter).

How hard is it to learn? Dutch is probably the easiest language to learn for English speakers as it positions itself somewhere between German and English.

In the Dutch language, the word ‘t (Dutch pronunciation: [ət]) is a contraction of the article “het”, meaning “the”. ‘t can be found as a tussenvoegsel, a word that is positioned between a person’s first and last name.

Dutch uses the acute accent to add emphasis to a vowel or to distinguish two possible pronunciations from each other: Á/á, É/é, Í/í, Ó/ó, Ú/ú.

m², de ~ (m) (vierkante meter)

Well, not exactly. In the case of Dutch, the double vowels exist to denote long vowels, while a single vowel represents a short vowel. Some languages do this using diacritics (accent marks, like the macron in Latin), but Dutch decided to do this using two vowels.