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Of course there are regional variations, but when speaking Standaardnederlands (standard Dutch) they are relatively small and consistent, nothing like Norwegian

Of course there are regional variations, but when speaking Standaardnederlands (standard Dutch) they are relatively small and consistent, nothing like Norwegian. With consistent meaning that the same syllable will almost always be pronounced the same way within that region. Not like English, where "bread" and "great" have completely different ways of pronouncing the "(r)ea" sound, despite being written the same way. Poems rhyme usually, wherever you go within the language region. Local dialects have larger differences, but if they are written (relatively rare), it usually uses some form of phonetic writing, and those aren't standardized anyways.

mcv 7y ago
That's certainly how we'd like to look at it, but it's only true by defining "standaardnederlands" fairly narrowly. Plenty of regional accents change phonemes, like 'ij' -> 'ie', hard 'g' to soft 'g', and some of those changes don't happen the same way across all words. Dutch is certainly not the big mess of inconsistency that English is, but it still has some inconsistencies. For example, the word "lijk" is pronounced different from the suffix "-lijk". And then there's the difference between "een" and "een".