Dutch Alphabet: IJ, Y and Vowels Marked é, ë or ï

Is ij one letter or two in the Dutch alphabet?

Two, by the Taalunie's count, though Dutch often treats them as one, so the Dutch alphabet stays at a to z. Historically the ij is two letters, and there is no separate place for it in the Dutch alphabet.

Taaladvies.net, the advice service of the Nederlandse Taalunie, gives that answer in its note on sorting ij (opens in a new tab). The note then adds the other half: the ij is often regarded as a single letter all the same.

The history explains both halves. Medieval Dutch wrote a long i as ii: just as Dutch now writes kopen and koopt, it then wrote bliven and bliift. Nobody put dots on an i yet, so a handwritten ii was easy to misread as a u. Writers added a small stroke below the second i to tell them apart, and that is the ij.

After the fifteenth century its sound moved too, from the vowel of ie to the diphthong of ei.

Two places show the ij acting as one letter:

• Capitals. A word that starts with ij and needs a capital takes two: IJsland, never Ijsland. Taaladvies.net's note on IJsland (opens in a new tab) sets this against the long vowels aa, ee, oo and uu and the pairs oe, ui and ei, which keep their second letter small: Aarlen, Oegstgeest. The ij is the one exception.
• Crosswords. A Dutch crossword gives the ij a single square.

So the Dutch alphabet grid at the top of this page counts the plain letters from a to z, the letters the Unicode CLDR uses as index headings for Dutch (opens in a new tab). It gives the ij no heading of its own. CLDR's main set for Dutch (opens in a new tab) lists ij among the characters Dutch writes, beside the accented vowels and an ij with two accents, íj́, which the section on stress below explains.

Where do ij words go in a Dutch dictionary, under i or y?

Under i, because the ij has no place of its own in the Dutch alphabet. Taaladvies.net says words and names that begin with ij, such as ijdel and IJsland, go under the i in a dictionary or any other alphabetical list. Sorting treats the ij as i plus j, the same way ie words sit under i and ei words under e.

CLDR's collation for Dutch agrees: in the list of Dutch characters under the grid, ij comes straight after ï.

The y is a different letter. It comes after x, and yoga and Yvette are filed under it. Some lists put ij words under y anyway, and Taaladvies.net advises against that, since y is another letter. Three things keep the mix-up alive:

What blurs the line	What Taaladvies.net says
the letter's name	reciting the alphabet, people say ij for y
old spellings in names	Middle Dutch used y as a variant of ij and of i: Heyn and Heijn sound the same
today's words	the line is clearer, and y turns up mostly in loanwords: baby, yankee, yoga

None of that moves the ij in a list, though. Taaladvies.net's advice stays the same: ij words under i, y words under y.

Why does Dutch spell the same sound as ei and as ij?

Because the two used to sound different, and Dutch spelling kept the old split. The Taalunie's spelling rules, the Leidraad of the Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal (opens in a new tab), call them the short ei and the long ij. Leiden, to lead, and lijden, to suffer, are said the same way today, yet in the Middle Ages they were le(i)den and liden. Many dialects still keep the difference.

So spelling an ei or ij word is a matter of its history, not its sound. The Leidraad gives no rule a writer can apply by ear: when in doubt, it says, the Woordenlijst decides.

When does Dutch write an accent to show stress?

Only when a reader could get the sentence wrong without it, so most Dutch stress accents are optional. The Leidraad's rule on stress marks (opens in a new tab) is that the stress mark is the acute, ´. Taaladvies.net's note on the klemtoonteken (opens in a new tab) gives the case where it matters. With méér, a machine cannot print more addresses; with meer, it no longer prints them at all.

When there is no risk of a misreading, the marks are not needed. Writers often use them to contrast two words, as in mét of zónder suiker, with or without sugar, but even there Taaladvies.net calls them optional. It also warns against overdoing them: too many stress marks make a text look shrill and restless.

A long vowel written with two letters takes two accents, one on each of the first two letters:

Sound	Written with stress	Leidraad or Taaladvies.net example
a single vowel	é, á	dat is dé oplossing; het kán
a long vowel of two letters	óó, éé, úú	vóórkomen against voorkómen
oe and ie	óé, íé	dóén, níéuwe
the ij	íj́, usually íj	blíjven kijken!
three vowel letters	the first two only	móói, ééuw

The ij row is why CLDR lists íj́. The rule gives the ij two accents too, but the Leidraad says the mark on the j usually drops for technical reasons, and Taaladvies.net explains that a word processor makes it hard to put an accent on a j.

So the everyday form is blíjven, with the accent on the i alone. CLDR keeps the full form íj́ in its main set, and the copy pad on this page holds it, capital ÍJ́ included.

The acute has a second job. In the Leidraad's section on pronunciation marks (opens in a new tab), é on an e stands for the long ee sound and è for the open è: hé against hè, één dag, blèren. Only the acute ever marks stress. The grave never does.

French loanwords bring their own accents, the Leidraad's section on accent marks (opens in a new tab) adds: the é of logé, the è of scène, the ê of crêpe. CLDR files è and ê among the auxiliary characters for Dutch, listed further down this page.

Which Dutch keyboard layout types the accents on Windows?

Two Microsoft layouts type the Dutch accents through dead keys, and neither needs an Alt code. Read on 2026-10-14, Microsoft's Dutch keyboard (opens in a new tab) has a dead key for the acute and one for the trema. The United States-International (opens in a new tab) layout puts the same two marks on the apostrophe key. Press the dead key, let go, then press the vowel.

Mark	Dutch layout	United States-International	What the vowels give
acute	´, the second key right of L	', the apostrophe	á é í ó ú, and ý
trema	¨, the key right of P	Shift+', the double quote	ä ë ï ö ü, and ÿ

On both layouts a dead key followed by the space bar types the mark on its own. Neither has a key for LATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ, U+0133, the single character Unicode also encodes for ij. On a Dutch keyboard the ij is typed the way the Taalunie spells it: an i, then a j.

Één or Eén: does Dutch put accents on capitals?

Not at the start of a Dutch word. Taaladvies.net's note on accents on capitals (opens in a new tab) says Dutch words take no accent on a capital initial, whether for stress or for sound. Its examples keep the mark on the small letter that follows: Eén zwaluw maakt nog geen zomer, one swallow does not make a summer, and Eét nou toch iets!, do eat something!

Written all in capitals, the whole word keeps its accents: ÉÉN IS GEEN, one is none. Loanwords are freer. They may keep their marks on a capital, and Taaladvies.net's own examples are À propos, Champs-Élysées, Émile and Überhaupt, with CRÈME BRÛLÉE and CURAÇAO in full capitals.

The small één follows a rule of its own. Taaladvies.net's note on één and een (opens in a new tab) says the numeral one takes its accents only where it could be misread as the article a. Hij heeft nog één rekening te betalen means one bill, not two. In set phrases like een van de, one of the, the context already says it is the numeral, so the accents are left out.

What do the two dots in ruïne and coördinatie do?

The two dots split vowel letters that would otherwise be read as one sound. Dutch calls the mark the trema, and like the accents it adds no letter to the Dutch alphabet. The Leidraad's rule (opens in a new tab) on vowel clashes, klinkerbotsing, picks the mark by how the word is built:

Kind of word	What Dutch writes	Leidraad examples
a word with no parts	a trema	Kaïn, poëzie, ruïne, patiënt
a word with a suffix or prefix	a trema	onderzeeër, smeuïg, beïnvloeden, geërfd
a compound of two words	a hyphen	gala-avond, garage-eigenares, bureau-inhoud
a Greek or Latin prefix	a hyphen	co-ouder, de-escaleren, mini-essay

The last row has a catch, and coördinatie is its example. Co-ouderschap is read as co, together, plus ouderschap, so it takes the prefix hyphen. Coördinatie does not mean co plus ordinatie, so the Leidraad treats it as a word with no parts and gives it a trema.

Reünie works the same way: it is not opnieuw een unie, a union again, while re-integreren really is integrating again. Coëfficiënt, coïncidentie and biënnale follow coördinatie.

An accent does not stop a clash, the Leidraad adds, so café-eigenaar keeps its hyphen. In Unicode the Dutch trema and the German umlaut are one mark, which the umlaut page explains. How the trema works on the e of België and ideeën is on the e with umlaut page.