Apart from the velar nasal, there are no restrictions on singleton consonants in onset position, neither word-initially nor word-medially, independent of whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed. In general, a single word-initial consonant may precede any vowel.

The examples in the previous table illustrate that the distribution of the velar nasal differs from other Dutch consonants. The velar nasal /ŋ/ cannot constitute a word-initial singleton onset. However, the velar nasal can be found in onsets of word-medial syllables following B-class vowels as illustrated by the examples zwanger/zʋɑŋər/pregnant and engel/ɛŋəl/angel. Note that in all these cases the velar nasal occurs inter-vocalically, with the second vowel always being schwa (Kager 1986). According to Booij's (1995:36) analysis, the velar nasal is ambisyllabic, i.e. it belongs to the coda of the first syllable and the onset of the second syllable:

Since onsets and nuclei form different constituents of a syllable, co-occurrence restrictions between segments in onset and nucleus positions are very rare. The only restrictions that can be found in Dutch are: /h/ may not precede schwa, i.e. /*hə/, and glides may not precede vowels that are either too similar or identical with respect to place of articulation, i.e. /*ji/, /*ʋy/ and /*ʋø/ (see also pansyllabic constraints). Notice that schwa can only occur in unstressed syllables, whereas all other vowels can be found in stressed and unstressed syllables.

(table adapted from Cohen et al. 1972:92)