The best AI apps to practice speaking Dutch

What you need to practice speaking Dutch

Dutch is one of the easier ones. In our ranking of 67 languages it’s the 55th hardest for English speakers, at 3,422 effort points. That’s easier than German (4,255), and only a little more than Spanish (2,941).

Lots of words look like English: water, boek, hand. But a few things trip up everyone, and one of them isn’t about grammar at all.

• De or hetEvery noun is a de-word or a het-word, and for most of them there’s no rule you can trust: de stad, het huis, het meisje. You learn them by hearing them, and by being corrected when you get one wrong.
• The verb comes secondStart a sentence with gisteren, yesterday, and the verb jumps in front of you: Gisteren ben ik, not Gisteren ik ben. After omdat, because, it goes all the way to the end: omdat ik moe ben.
• Verbs that splitOpbellen is to call. But “I’ll call you tomorrow” is Ik bel je morgen op, with the op at the very end. It feels strange until you’ve said it a hundred times.
• Sounds English doesn’t haveThe g and ch from the back of your throat (harder in the Netherlands, softer in Flanders), and vowels like ui in huis, eu in neus and ij in mijn. The quickest fix: say your sentence, then hear a native speaker say the same one.
• The Netherlands or FlandersIt’s one language, written the same way. But you hear the difference: the accent, and everyday words. In Flanders you’ll hear goesting where the Dutch say zin, and plezant for leuk. So pick a teacher who sounds like where you’re going. On Teacher AI, our Flemish teachers speak with a Flemish voice.
• Someone who won’t switch to EnglishAsk anyone learning Dutch: the moment you hesitate, people switch to English, to be nice. So you need a place where you can be slow, make mistakes, and keep going in Dutch.
• Lots of Dutch you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeEven an easier language takes hours of talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Dutch. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Dutch and Flemish YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itKnowing a word isn’t the same as using it, with the right de or het and the verb in the right place. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?. And nobody switches to English. Going to Belgium? Talk with a Flemish teacher, in a Flemish voice.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Dutch? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Duolingo (free), Babbel or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Dutch

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, what kind of word it is, and an example with a translation. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Dutch and Flemish teachers

Learning Dutch for Belgium? Most apps only give you the Dutch of the Netherlands. On Teacher AI you can talk with Flemish teachers, in a Flemish voice: Annelies from Ghent and Joris from Antwerp. You hear the soft g, the Flemish rhythm and the words people actually use in Flanders, from your very first conversation.

Prefer the Dutch of the Netherlands? Talk with Elise from Rotterdam, Kim from The Hague (the YouTuber behind Dutchies to be), or Jan, one of our co-founders. Switch any time: your chat history stays.

Flemish teachers, with Flemish voices

• 
  Annelies de Smet

  Ghent · Belgian
• 
  Joris van Acker

  Antwerp · Belgian

Teachers with Netherlands Dutch voices

• 
  Elise De Vries

  Rotterdam · Dutch
• 
  Jan Van der Aa

  Brussels · Dutch
• 
  Kim Jautze

  The Hague · Dutch

  Dutchies to be

Input: Dutch to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Dutch you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to a Dutch or Flemish YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance.
• Suggested for youWatch suggests videos by topic from Dutch and Flemish channels, from ones made for learners, like Kim’s Dutchies to be and Dutch Today, to Universiteit van Vlaanderen and the news on EenVandaag. Each one shows the share of words you’d understand.
• Stories written for youRead writes Dutch texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Dutch word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list, names and numbers aside, and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people start Dutch on Duolingo. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Langua · Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Praktika · Teacher AI vs Jumpspeak · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel AvivCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending