How many Dutch words do you need — and which ones?

How many Dutch words you need, and which: what the Staatsexamen NT2 builds its tasks on (a frequency dictionary plus a supplementary list), why frequency comes first, and how to learn thousands of words without forgetting them.

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The Binnenhof in The Hague, seat of the Dutch government, across the Hofvijver
Photo: Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized.

A word count is less useful than the right words. Dutch exams and everyday life use a core of very frequent words over and over — learn those first and the rest gets easier.

What the Staatsexamen NT2 uses

The College voor Toetsen en Examens says the words in the NT2 tasks come from the Core and General lists of A Frequency Dictionary of Dutch, plus its own supplementary word list, renewed on 1 November 2026 — two pages, free on the Staatsexamens NT2 site. So for B1 and B2, frequency is literally the syllabus.

Frequency first

The commonest few hundred Dutch words — de, het, een, zijn, hebben, niet, ook, maar, gaan, komen — make up a large share of any text. Learn them first, with their forms: zijn, hebben, gaan, komen, zeggen, doen, kunnen, moeten.

Then by topic

After the core, learn words in the situations you meet — housing, work, health, the gemeente, school. That is how the inburgering exams are built, and how our inburgering path sorts its 40 sets. Our Dutch corpus has 6,300+ words from A1 to B2.

How to keep them

  • Recall, don’t reread: cover the Dutch and produce it.
  • Spaced review: see a word again just before you forget it.
  • Article and plural with the noun: het huis, de huizen (plurals).
  • Say it out loud with the recording — every verb page and the phrasebook have one.
  • Use it in a sentence the same day.

Sixteen a day is about 5,800 new words a year — if you review. Fewer, reviewed, beats more, forgotten.

16 words a day, reviewed

16Word teaches Dutch vocabulary by frequency and topic, 16 at a time, with spaced review, audio and a game of Blocks between answers. Free to start.

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Frequently asked questions

How many words do you need for B1 Dutch?

There is no official count. The Staatsexamen NT2 builds its tasks on the Core and General lists of A Frequency Dictionary of Dutch plus a short supplementary list, so the most frequent words matter most.

How many words does Dutch have?

Dictionaries list hundreds of thousands, but a learner needs a few thousand frequent words to handle daily life and the exams.

Which Dutch words should I learn first?

The most frequent ones — articles, pronouns, zijn, hebben, gaan, komen, niet, maar — then the words of your daily situations: home, work, health, the municipality.

How do I remember Dutch words?

Active recall with spaced review: produce the word from memory, see it again just before you would forget it, and use it in a sentence.

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