miércoles, 13 de noviembre de 2013

Dutch - Articles

Definite and indefinite articles.

The indefinite article in een, and, as well as in english, it is just used in singular. Plural has no indefinite article.
Example:
            Een huis.
            Een lepel.


There are, technicly speaking, three kind of definite articles in singular: masculine, femenine and neutral; and one in the plural form.

Singular: de, de, het
Plural: de

Examples:
            De appel       (singular masculine)
            De appels      (plural masculine)
De kerk         (singular femenine)
De kerken     (plural femenine)
Het been       (singular neutral)
De benen      (plural neutral)

As we can see, de works pretty much for everything  xD!

So, although we have three for the singular forms and one for the plural, like in german; masculine, femenine and plural are the same, like the english the. The het article, which we use for the neutral form in singular only, is not just the one different, but it is also much less frecuent. You might not believe this at first because there are a whole bunch of very common words that have the neutral article, which might give you the impression that the amounts are the same ore even thay the het article is more common that the de ones.

For this reason, learn the article for each word by memory, and do the same as you advance your studies, but if you do not know the article for new words as your dutch is better and you find yourself in a conversation in dutch, just go with the de.
           



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