Gender in Dutch Grammar

Gender In Dutch Grammar

In the Dutch language, nouns have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. The gender of a word determines the articles used with it and the pronouns referring to it. Sometimes masculine and feminine nouns are collectively called de-words, whereas neuter nouns are called het-words, in accordance with the definite article used with them. Traditionally, pronouns used for masculine nouns are hij/hem/zijn, feminine zij/haar, neuter het/zijn. In some parts of the Netherlands, awareness of the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns has disappeared, producing a common gender, and using the masculine pronouns for feminine nouns has become quite common in speech and accepted in informal writing. In Belgium, the distinction is usually, but not always, maintained. For a large number of words no clear division is determined, and dictionaries just indicate them as de-words. In the case of persons and animals of known sex the pronouns used are generally determined by the biological sex rather than by the grammatical gender of the word. In some dialects, there are exceptions here too: "de koe bij zijn horens vatten" and "Greta zijn hoed" (some West-Flemish dialects).

Although for most words gender can be found only by consulting a dictionary, the following rules can be used to determine the gender of many words: