Flemish and Dutch: which one to select
Flemish (Vlaams) is the Dutch spoken in Flanders, the northern half of Belgium, and by the Dutch-speaking community in Brussels. The official language of Flanders is Dutch, and Flemish writers use the same spelling rules as the Netherlands. When people say Flemish they can mean either Belgian standard Dutch, as heard on VRT, or the local dialects of West Flanders, East Flanders, Antwerp, Brabant and Limburg.
In the upload box Flemish is covered by Dutch, code nl, and this page preselects it. There is no separate Belgian option. The transcript is written in standard Dutch spelling, the same as you would read in De Standaard.
Belgium has no separate country page here, so this page also serves anyone transcribing Dutch-language recordings made anywhere in Belgium. If a recording from Wallonia is in French, switch the language to French before you upload. For speakers in the German-speaking East Cantons, choose German.
Belgian words the transcript may change
Flemish speech has its own everyday vocabulary. The model usually keeps it, but now and then it replaces a Belgian word with the Netherlandic one, or mishears it as something that sounds similar. These are worth a check during review.
- Belgian words such as goesting (appetite or desire), plezant (pleasant), schoon (meaning beautiful), nonkel (uncle), pistolet (bread roll) and content (happy).
- French-derived words common in Belgium, such as frigo, GSM for a mobile phone, and allez as a filler.
- Diminutives ending in -ke or -ske, such as manneke or boekske, which the draft may turn into the northern -je form.
- Place and street names across Flanders and Brussels, which are the single most common correction.
Accents, dialects and Brussels
A speaker using clear Belgian standard Dutch, such as a lecturer at a university or a radio presenter, usually gives a clean draft. As speech moves toward a local dialect, the draft gets weaker. A grandparent from the Westhoek speaking full West Flemish, or a conversation in thick Antwerp dialect, will produce a rough text that needs a careful pass with the audio.
Brussels recordings often switch between Dutch and French, and sometimes English, within one meeting. Choose the language spoken most. French is a separate option, so a meeting held mainly in French should be uploaded as French. Short French phrases inside Dutch sentences usually come through, though their spelling may vary.
Auto-detect can misread a short Flemish clip, especially one that starts with bonjour or a few words of English. Leaving Dutch selected avoids that.
Flemish recordings people transcribe
Typical uploads are thesis interviews for Flemish universities, meetings at Flemish companies and local governments, podcasts and YouTube videos from Flanders that need subtitles, journalism interviews, and family recordings of older relatives telling stories in dialect. You can upload audio or video files, record in the browser, or paste a YouTube or TikTok link.
For a thesis, decide whether your transcription rules ask you to keep dialect words as spoken or write them in standard Dutch, then edit toward that. Keeping timestamps on helps your supervisor find each quote.
Reviewing and exporting
Play the file and follow the highlighted line. Click any line to hear it again and correct it in place. Export TXT or DOCX for text, SRT or VTT for subtitles, PDF for a fixed copy, or CSV for coding. Speaker labels are available on paid plans or with a Minute Pack.
RocketScribe writes the Flemish as spoken and does not translate it. The Google Translate link and the AI prompt export let you read it in English or French, or ask an AI assistant for the main points of a meeting. Files are never used to train AI models.