Two experiments were conducted in order to explore the role of prefix identification in the reading of Dutch bisyllabic words. Although Dutch orthography is highly regular, several deviations from a one-to-one correspondence exist. A case in point is the grapheme E which can represent the vowels epsilon, e and oe in polysyllabic words. In Experiment 1, 33 third-grade children and 46 sixth-grade children were presented a list of randomly ordered bisyllabic words starting with the letter string BE and the first syllable being (1) a real prefix, (2) a phonological prefix (same sound pattern as a prefix), or (3) a pseudoprefix (sound pattern deviant from a prefix). Pseudowords starting with the same letter string were also presented. The results showed that words starting with a real or a phonological prefix were identified more accurately than words starting with a pseudoprefix. For the pseudowords, a predominant interpretation of the first part as a prefix was also evidenced. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was administered to 35 third-grade children, 33 sixth-grade children, and 26 adults. Words with a phonological prefix and words with a pseudoprefix were randomly presented along with other word types. The data showed both children and adults to retrieve words with phonological prefixes more quickly and more accurately than words with a pseudoprefix. The results are discussed with reference to current models of word decoding.