Most Americans say Hague (rhymes with plague), but my cosmopolitan friends say Hague (ryhmes with frog). Which is correct?
In English, it is pronounced as rhyming with “plague.” In Dutch, it’s pronounced “grovvenhogga.”
(Source: M-W 1980)
My dictionary shows it as the first pronounciation. The second might be roughly consistent with the Dutch pronounciation (but then of course the article would no longer be “the”).
The British politician Willaim Hague was pronounced Hague (rhymes with plague), so I assume the place will be pronounced the same way in English speaking countries.
Your cosmopolitan friend is using the non-English pronunciation, the English speakers I knew when I went there for MUN all used the “rhymes with plague” version.
go-dam fur-i-nurz
The Ca–
The Caaa–
The Caaaa…
doesn’t rhyme with frog.
not “og”
it sounds like the AR in ARgonaut.
hAR-g.
Hmm. On NPR I think it rhymes with plague. In Dutch it’s spelled den Haag and pronounced something like “ha-aw-ch” with a carried-out ‘a’ and a soft ‘ch’ sound at the end (or a choking, gargling heimlich manouvre sound if you are from certain provinces).
FWIW, every time I’ve heard it on CBC Radio, it’s been Hague-as-in-plague.
's gravenhage
is the full name…it is quite hard to pronounce unless you speak dutch…
den haag
is the short form of the city-- say “den hahg” (the g is gutteral, mid-throat much like a hard ‘ch’)
The Hague
is the anglisized version-- say “hayg” (rhymes with plague)
Ken P-- your cosmopolitan friends aren’t correct-- even a native Dutch speaker will pronounce it to rhyme with ‘plague’ when using the anglisized version (the hague)
Doctor Goo Fee explained the differences well (except he left out the capitalization). For advanced pronunciation here’s my take on it.
Den Haag (where I’m sitting right right now, in a beautiful morning sunshine) is I think best pronounced like the first syllable of ‘lagoon’: Haag, like ‘lag-’. Only the ‘g’ should ideally be pronounced harder, but for Americans that is next to impossible without an operation or a horrible throat disease. If you really want to try it, the instructions of capabara are fairly close. The trick of the g is that compared to the g as in lagoon, it should be spoken more in front of the mouth, like a ‘k’. I guess for Ameriancs the Dutch g is like a cross of the g and the k.
We are not allowed to explain how to pronounce 's Gravenhage, as that will be used as a shibboleth to detect foreigners come the next invasion.
I pronounce it ‘HAG-oo’.
We’ll try to explain the Hague, but you can keep Groeningen and Scheveningen secrets.
capybara, you hit it on the head pretty much, plus I almost spit my teeth out on “Scheveningen”…It always make me think of a 2 stroke motorcycle revving up when I hear that pronounced.
I lived in the Netherlands for five years, so I mastered a lot of that heimlich tongue and roof of the mouth stuff.