Lidwoorden

The Dutch language has three articles: de, het, een.

‘Een’ is indefinite. Example: Een jongen en een meisje

‘De’ and ‘het’ are definite. For exemple: De jongen en het meisje

The reason for the difference between ‘de’ and ‘het’ is that there are masculine words, feminine words and neuter words. All masculine and feminine words get ‘de’ while all neuter words get ‘het’. A good way to remember this is simply to:

Think of:  ‘the man, the woman and the child’, since this will be: de man, de vrouw en het kind.

Though there is mostly not a very good reason for things to be masculine, feminine or neuter there are a few rules:

Use ‘het’

– all words that are made smaller with ‘(e)(t)je‘ are neuter (de vrouw – het vrouwtje, de man – het mannetje),
– all infinite verbs used as nouns are neuter (het eten, het fietsen),
– words starting with standard prefixes like ge-, ver-, ont- and be- and not ending on -ing are neuter (het gevaar, het verhaal, het ontzag, het beslag)

Use ‘de’

– words ending on -el or –er are quite often de-words (de tafel, de beker),
– buildings, however, are often het-words (het theater, het huis, het station. – just not: de bioscoop, since that ends on -scoop, which is one of those standard suffixes),
– practically all words that and on standard suffixes like -ing, -ij, -ie, -e and -heid are feminine (de vereniging, de bakkerij, de politie, de dame, de moeilijkheid),
– in plural all words get de (de meisjes, de boeken)
– all fruits and vegetables are de, de pruim, de tomaat, de broccoli
– and, naturally, all words referring to persons (individuals) are de-words (de minister, de bakker).

To find out what words are feminine, masculine or neuter you can look them up in the dictionairy.