Gender in Dutch grammar

In the Dutch language, the gender of a noun determines the articles, adjective forms and pronouns that are used in reference to that noun. Gender is a difficult and controversial topic in Dutch, because different speakers may distinguish different genders, and therefore there may be disagreement over the gender of any given noun.

Overview

Traditionally, nouns in Dutch, like in other (sometimes older) Germanic languages, have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Almost all Dutch speakers maintain the neuter gender, which has distinct adjective inflection, definite article and some pronouns. The picture is less clear for the masculine and feminine gender, because the adjective inflection of both is identical, and both share the same article and the same demonstrative pronouns. The standard language only distinguishes masculine and feminine genders by the use of the personal pronoun, which is hij for masculine nouns and zij for feminine nouns. It is also distinguished in the case forms of the definite article, but those have fallen out of use and are only retained in archaic usage and fixed expressions.

In Belgium and southern dialects of the Netherlands, the distinction between the three genders is usually, but not always, maintained. Words that were traditionally feminine are still referred to with zij, whereas traditionally masculine words retain the use of hij. However, 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, such as West Flemish, there are exceptions: de koe bij zijn horens vatten "to catch the cow by his horns" and Greta zijn hoed "Greta his hat".

In most remaining parts of the Netherlands, the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns has disappeared, producing a common gender that uses the same inflections and pronouns as the original masculine. The pronouns hij and zij are used when the referent has a natural gender, so hij is used for a male person, zij for a female person. However, when the noun is inanimate and has no natural gender, the pronoun hij is used not only for traditionally masculine nouns, but for traditionally feminine nouns as well. Thus, the situation in these areas resembles that of English, although there is still a distinction among inanimate nouns between common hij and neuter het (English uses it for both, having lost all gender distinctions in inanimate nouns).

The standard language

In the written tradition, which forms the base for the (prescribed) standard language, there are some remains of the traditional three genders. The following table shows the use of various articles and pronouns in the standard form of Dutch, as well as how the use of gender in the two language areas aligns with this. In areas maintaining the three genders, there is no common gender. In areas with only two genders, only nouns referring to people have a distinction between masculine and feminine, all other nouns that are not neuter are common.

Masculine/
Common		 Feminine Neuter
Indefinite article een een een
Definite article de de het
Adjective, no preceding article groene groene groen
Adjective, with preceding article groene groene groen(e)
Subject pronoun hij zij het
Object pronoun hem haar het
Possessive zijn haar zijn
Inflected possessive
zijn as example		 zijn zijn zijn
Proximal demonstrative deze deze dit
Distal demonstrative die die dat

The standard as prescribed by the Dutch Language Union categorises most nouns into one of four categories:

Thus, the standard only mandates the feminine gender for a subset of all historically feminine nouns. These are nouns with an overtly recognizable feminine suffix. However, this distinction is maintained only in formal or written standard Dutch, whereas many speakers do not make such a distinction in informal speech; they use only the common gender. Such speakers must therefore remember which endings are feminine, since they cannot rely on their own language intuition. Although some speakers do follow the standard in this respect, others do not and simply use the genders the way they are accustomed to them in their own everyday speech (either masculine/feminine/neuter or common/neuter).

The trend so far is towards the increasing use of the common gender in favour of the masculine/feminine distinction, even in more formal writing. While this process has long been completed in the spoken language of the north, it is now slowly gaining ground in the south, with the increase of language contact through mass media like television and the Internet. Some dictionaries have dropped the distinction between the two genders entirely, preferring to mark words with their definite article de (common) or het (neuter). However, because the feminine gender is normally used (at least for inanimate nouns) only in formal or written language, which tends to follow the standard more strictly, an opposite trend has also arisen. As a result of hypercorrection, caused by the perceived formality of the feminine gender, the feminine pronouns are now occasionally used for nouns that are historically masculine, and even for nouns that are neuter.

The following list reflects the use of gender that is prescribed for standard Dutch and used by the Language Union and educational material for teaching gender. It is not exhaustive, and covers only cases that follow some recognizable pattern. Many words have unpredictable gender and simply have to be memorized (and will be f/m in the standard, if not neuter).

Masculine nouns

Words referring to animate entities whose natural gender is masculine:

However, diminutives such as jongetje "little boy" are neuter nouns. Nouns for professions (which are often historically masculine) may also be treated as gender-neutral, and are then either masculine or feminine depending on the referent.

Words ending with the following suffixes, which mostly form agent nouns, are masculine:

There are a few exceptions, such as:

Abstract deverbal nouns are normally masculine:

New abstract nouns formed in this way are always masculine. However, some may be feminine, particularly if they are older words.

Feminine nouns

Words referring to animate objects whose natural gender is feminine:

This includes words ending in a suffix that derives a noun for a female person from either a masculine noun or from another word:

However, diminutives such as meisje "girl" are neuter.

Words for abstract concepts ending with the following suffixes are feminine:

There are a few exceptions, e.g. dienst "service", which is masculine. There are also many nouns ending in -schap that are neuter, such as gereedschap "tool", landschap "landscape". These usually refer to concrete objects rather than abstract concepts, but the distinction is not always clear. For example, ouderschap "parenthood" is neuter but abstract, while gemeenschap "community" is feminine but concrete.

Suffixes that are borrowed from Latin or Greek often retain their feminine gender from those languages. This includes:

There are, as always, a few exceptions. For example, kanarie "canary" is masculine and ministerie "ministry" is neuter.

Neuter nouns

Diminutives are always neuter. They end in -je in the standard language, but the suffix -ke is also used in many dialects.

When a diminutive refers to a person, masculine or feminine pronouns may be used to refer to the person instead of the neuter het. However, the definite article, demonstrative pronouns, and adjective inflection remain neuter.

Nouns prefixed with ge- with no suffix are neuter, especially if they are collectives derived from a verb stem:

Collective nouns prefixed with ge- and suffixed with -te are neuter:

Nouns prefixed with ge- and suffixed with -te are feminine if they are abstract concepts, such as gedachte "thought".

Names of towns, countries and languages are always neuter, even if they are clearly derived from a masculine, feminine or even plural noun:

The following suffixes that are borrowed from Latin or Greek are neuter:

There is one notable exception, datum (date), which is masculine, and has both a "regular" plural in datums and the original Latin neuter plural in data.

Southern Dutch

Southern Dutch consists roughly of all dialects south of the river Meuse. In these dialects, there was a tendency towards accusativism in early modern Dutch (16th and 17th centuries). This was the tendency to use the accusative case in the role of the nominative. When cases fell out of use later, the nominative was the one that survived, but in areas with accusativism these forms historically belonged to the accusative case. Unlike the old nominative, the accusative had a clear distinction between masculine and feminine forms. As it was these forms that survived in southern Dutch, the genders remained naturally distinct, and remain so up to the present day.

The following table shows the points where the southern dialects differ from the standard language. As the dialects themselves are not standardised, different forms may be found in different areas.

Masculine Feminine Neuter
Indefinite article ene(n), 'ne(n) een een
Definite article de(n) de het
Inflected possessive
zijn as example		 zijne(n) zijn zijn
Proximal demonstrative deze(n) deze dit
Distal demonstrative diene(n) die dat

Example 1: (vrouw is feminine)

versus: (auto and boom are masculine)

Gender-neutral language

Dutch employs a variety of means to accommodate cases where the gender of a person is not known.

See also

References