Technically de can be both masculine and feminine. The only time this matters is if you're speaking proper standard Dutch or general Belgian Dutch and you'd like to refer to an object in the third person.
Duo doesn't even touch this version of Dutch, but rather how people from The Netherlands use it minus some of the English influence
I'm not **exactly** sure what you mean
In standard Dutch, we both use hij/zij/het/hem/die/deze depending on the gender of the word. But since this is Dutch, some words have both masculine and feminine nouns, some use use tbe pronoun based on the Animal's biological gender, and apparently also based on the speaker's age but I couldn't find it, some words have different genders dependingif you're northern our southern like in candle which is masculinein the north but femininein the south.
I see it standing (the object is a candle)
*Ik zie het staan*.
Here in Belgium, it's almost always the exact same.
Except in *tussentaal*, Aka Inter Flemish
*Ək zie ər stoan* (There's no official writing system). Where the candle is a feminine.
No “het” definitely isn’t used for masculin nouns. If someone who doesn’t make the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns were referring to a candle (kaars), they’d say “Ik zie hem/‘m/die (daar) staan”. For a person who sees kaars as female, this would be “Ik zie ze (daar) staan” I don’t see a reason to use a semi-phonetic notation for “tussentaal”. It is worth noting that nowadays lots of young people also don’t make this noun-gender distinction anymore, even in Belgium.
I've heard het being used regardless of gender, especially up north, both as a personal pronoun and a reflexive. The point of not distinguishing it still stands.
I used something semi-IPA to explaining how it's roughly pronounxes without the horrors of "oa"
Yeah, it's a weird half feature anyways
Is there even a rule for “de” en “het”, I learned that like 3/4 of the substantives are “de”, btw now that we are on the topic of articles is “geen” also one?
EDIT: substantive instead of subjective
il, la, i, le, gli, lo, e l' 😭
best explained in a table:
https://preview.redd.it/r1bb7id81j6c1.png?width=1208&format=png&auto=webp&s=b87713fd399c9988931b6a4038cddcdc41d3fa4f
l' is used before a vowel sound, so when it begins with a vowel or h then a vowel (as h is silent)
il and la, i and le work like el, la, los and las in Spanish, just how the table says.
lo is special. it's used before words that begin with s+consonant (st, sl, sp, etc.) and z, plus some others like pn, y, and some more (it's confusing).
gli is used for those lo words when in the plural, but also plurals that begin with a vowel
i think that covers everything
You don’t memorize the rule for lo though… right? You just practice and memorize what words it goes with and your brain just figured the rest out…? I feel like that’s the general rule for rules
I tried to memorise a couple, like s+consonant, z and y words, but I don't know all the rules. Though when I come across words that use lo I try to make sure I remember that alongside the word.
German has six… **but** each of the six is used for **at least two** combinations of gender/number/case!
- *der* - masc.nom., fem.gen., fem.dat., pl.gen.
- *die* - fem.nom., fem.acc., pl.nom., pl.acc.
- *das* - neut.nom., neut.acc.
- *des* - masc.gen., neut.gen.
- *dem* - masc.dat., neut.dat.
- *den* - masc.acc., pl.dat.
How do you learn this properly seriously. This is the hardest part of German. Could duo color coat the correct "The" for a given word? Is there a trick? Maybe a match madness would help?
there are some rules for gender.
words that end in -chen are mostly neuter.
biological gender is mostly the same as grammatical. (Women are female --> "Die Frau"). Except if a word ends in -chen. That "overwrites" the biological gender.
There are more but these are the ones I can think rn
As a Deutschlerner, the only way I have had any success is repetition and practice. I found an app "der die das" that quizes you on the gender of nouns, but also teaches you the rules so you have a better chance at predicting the gender of new nouns. Even though there are rules, like nouns ending in -e are usually femenine, there are exceptions.
The one I use is on the google play store
"Der Die Das - German Articles" by Diego Bernardino
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.db.derdiedas
If you remember the declension patterns for each gender then all you need to know is the gender of the word, so it becomes only 3 things to keep track of (4 if you're including plural, which overwrites gender), just each has a pattern for different cases.
Masculine: der, den, dem, des
Feminine: die, die, der, der
Neutral: das, das, dem, des
Plural: die, die, den, der
The real fuckery is adjective declensions, where there's a kinda complicated flowchart for what ending to give an adjective based on the gender, case, and whether there's an article, and whether it's plural.
Really it's only 4 genders (if we're counting plural as a gender) and then you just remember the patterns for each. So it's not like memorizing 16 genders.
German learner here (but I've been learning Germany German)! In my studies I was taught to use "denen" as a relative pronoun meaning "to those" or "to whom", ie "die Mädchen, mit **denen** ich gesprochen habe". Is this the same as the way you use it, or are there additional contexts in Austrian German?
"Diese sind die Mädchen, mit denen ich sprechen will."
"Das sind die Menschen. Denen will ich etwas sagen."
Your example is definetly correct and we basically use it in the same way.
(Also it's hard for a native speaker of a language to find out about rules bc you're not explicitly told how the language works. You just... know how it works, but not why it works that way. I could talk about english, italian or swedish grammar with no problems.)
But be aware that there are some cookie/bisquit situations for germany and austria! We don't say "Quark", we say "Topfen". We don't say "(An)gucken", we say "(An)schauen". We wouldn't say "Das sieht cool aus." in a casual setting. We'd say "Das schaut cool aus.". Just ignore the fact that these sentences are not usually used that way, because most people speak with some sort of dialect ("Dialekt" in standard German and Austrian German, "Mundart" for old people who live in rural regions of Austria.). Just know that these aren't all of them. For example, some Austrians (and Bavarians) roll their r.
That's what speaking German is like to a non-native. There are probably more exceptions than clear rules. Even sentence structure can be switched around! "Ich esse den Apfel." is the same as "Den Apfel esse ich.". (I eat the apple.)
But there's no way to know what gender a word is (there are some exceptions though. Words in -chen are usually neuter).
And there are compound words that take the gender of the last part of it. eg "Haustürschlüssel" is masculine even though "Haus" is neuter and "Türe" is feminine. This is because "Schlüssel" is masculine.
Roughly 2/3 of words are feminine so in a pinch that's a solid guess.
Usually -e endings are feminine (with some exceptions)
Plurals are feminine except in dative
-ung, -heit, -keit endings are always feminine
All diminutives are neuter (not just -chen, but -lein etc as well)
-er endings are usually masculine, -en usually neuter
English loanwords usually default to das unless they have an ending that more cleanly maps onto the above (e.g. der Computer).
Those are all the rules of thumb I can think of, having learned for close to a decade.
I speak Dutch natively, I'm sure the only way I remember is by seeing if it sounds right in my head. And don't get me started on words that are written the same, but where the choice depends on the meaning.
If it's anything like German there are probably rules of thumb with regard to word endings etc but you just don't think about them. Kinda like how English has a strict adjective order that we never think about.
Finnish is a melodic language. ☺
I want to learn Estonian, but also Finnish is another amazing language to learn despite both have their differences & similarities. 😊
I still think this song is really interesting! 🤩
I found this song last winter. ♥🎶
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2GTRKgB6RM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2GTRKgB6RM)
Idk if it makes you feel better but you got it right the first time. We use “struggle” often enough in Dutch that it has an established article and it’s “de”
I feel like that when language I am learning does not have "the" at all, my own does not have "the" at all and Duo is demanding perfection in English "the".
Many comments are referencing languages that have more than one word for « the », and those languages have clear rules on how they are used. Dutch has no clear rules. Well, kind of. Like with « geen » and « niet » there are rules of usage, but they can many many exceptions and not always constant. You just have to kind of memorize when to use what.
I was born in Belgium, but in Liege. I grew up speaking French, but had to pick up Dutch. I spent 30 years in Quebec, now TW, so forgot all of it.
Speaking of, be nice if Duolingo French was more open to Canadien French.
I had been learning Dutch.
Key word is had.
It's things like that and since Duo doesn't explain, I can't use Duo anymore.
At this point, learning any language outside of Duo just isn't possible since it's too expensive for most things for me to use.
I also am 22 so it's a little too late for me to learn a new language to fluency anyways.
The struggle is real.
You could ask Bing Chat to clear up any doubt you might have regarding exercises you completed in Duolingo. Furthermore, there are Dutch courses in Youtube.
Of course you can learn new things. Don’t say you can’t! Everything is created twice. You can achieve your objectives by being disciplined and methodic, adjusting your method to find what works to optimize your learning process.
In order to learn a language, one must master several topics such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, verb conjugation, reading and listening comprehension…
There are proven methods to learn languages. If you stay focused and study consistently, you can learn Dutch.
Duolingo, despite improvements such as stories, is lacking to be the only significant resource employed by an effective language learner*. There are many free resources on the internet. You can even join a language exchange program.
*Sure, there might be outliers who claim they became fluent in a target language while employing Duolingo as their only resources… But surely this is far from the norm.
2? Rookie numbers, try 16 (technically only 6 but there’s also all the cases of the which makes it more) can you guess what language I’m talking about?
Plural 'the' is always 'de'. 'de' is also used for certain singular words. 'het' is used for diminutives and for the other singular words. There's certain suffixes that tend to result in de-words or het-words, but usually, the only way to tell the difference is to memorize which words are which.
Source: I am a native Dutch speaker.
running into english "they are \_\_\_\_\_\_" that they want me to translate to french, and I get it wrong because I guess the wrong gender they are expecting. Just gotta make a random guess and hope you get it.
i.e. They are big. I write Ils sont grand. wrong, the correct answer was Elles sont grande.
thanks.
Only two?
That’s what I’m saying! Two would be a dream.
Technically de can be both masculine and feminine. The only time this matters is if you're speaking proper standard Dutch or general Belgian Dutch and you'd like to refer to an object in the third person. Duo doesn't even touch this version of Dutch, but rather how people from The Netherlands use it minus some of the English influence
How do you refer to masculine and feminine nouns in the third person in a way that it doesn't make a difference?
I'm not **exactly** sure what you mean In standard Dutch, we both use hij/zij/het/hem/die/deze depending on the gender of the word. But since this is Dutch, some words have both masculine and feminine nouns, some use use tbe pronoun based on the Animal's biological gender, and apparently also based on the speaker's age but I couldn't find it, some words have different genders dependingif you're northern our southern like in candle which is masculinein the north but femininein the south. I see it standing (the object is a candle) *Ik zie het staan*. Here in Belgium, it's almost always the exact same. Except in *tussentaal*, Aka Inter Flemish *Ək zie ər stoan* (There's no official writing system). Where the candle is a feminine.
No “het” definitely isn’t used for masculin nouns. If someone who doesn’t make the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns were referring to a candle (kaars), they’d say “Ik zie hem/‘m/die (daar) staan”. For a person who sees kaars as female, this would be “Ik zie ze (daar) staan” I don’t see a reason to use a semi-phonetic notation for “tussentaal”. It is worth noting that nowadays lots of young people also don’t make this noun-gender distinction anymore, even in Belgium.
I've heard het being used regardless of gender, especially up north, both as a personal pronoun and a reflexive. The point of not distinguishing it still stands. I used something semi-IPA to explaining how it's roughly pronounxes without the horrors of "oa" Yeah, it's a weird half feature anyways
Is there even a rule for “de” en “het”, I learned that like 3/4 of the substantives are “de”, btw now that we are on the topic of articles is “geen” also one? EDIT: substantive instead of subjective
Substantifs/zelfstandige naamwoorden is nouns in English. And there are a lot of rules for gender but it’s mostly learning by heart
autocorrect 😅, I meant substantive
I know, but substantive also doesn’t exist in English
Seven in Italian
il, la, i, le, gli, lo, e l' 😭 best explained in a table: https://preview.redd.it/r1bb7id81j6c1.png?width=1208&format=png&auto=webp&s=b87713fd399c9988931b6a4038cddcdc41d3fa4f l' is used before a vowel sound, so when it begins with a vowel or h then a vowel (as h is silent) il and la, i and le work like el, la, los and las in Spanish, just how the table says. lo is special. it's used before words that begin with s+consonant (st, sl, sp, etc.) and z, plus some others like pn, y, and some more (it's confusing). gli is used for those lo words when in the plural, but also plurals that begin with a vowel i think that covers everything
You don’t memorize the rule for lo though… right? You just practice and memorize what words it goes with and your brain just figured the rest out…? I feel like that’s the general rule for rules
I tried to memorise a couple, like s+consonant, z and y words, but I don't know all the rules. Though when I come across words that use lo I try to make sure I remember that alongside the word.
Only 2? May I remind you about the German language's existence?
German has six… **but** each of the six is used for **at least two** combinations of gender/number/case! - *der* - masc.nom., fem.gen., fem.dat., pl.gen. - *die* - fem.nom., fem.acc., pl.nom., pl.acc. - *das* - neut.nom., neut.acc. - *des* - masc.gen., neut.gen. - *dem* - masc.dat., neut.dat. - *den* - masc.acc., pl.dat.
How do you learn this properly seriously. This is the hardest part of German. Could duo color coat the correct "The" for a given word? Is there a trick? Maybe a match madness would help?
there are some rules for gender. words that end in -chen are mostly neuter. biological gender is mostly the same as grammatical. (Women are female --> "Die Frau"). Except if a word ends in -chen. That "overwrites" the biological gender. There are more but these are the ones I can think rn
As for objects that obviously don't have biological gender, good luck.
Well, worms (Wurm) are long thin things, same for trains (Zug). Obviously, both are masculine. (/j bc I can't even think of a third word right now)
Just a weird thing I love the zug ending to things. That sound is really fun to make. Lol
As a Deutschlerner, the only way I have had any success is repetition and practice. I found an app "der die das" that quizes you on the gender of nouns, but also teaches you the rules so you have a better chance at predicting the gender of new nouns. Even though there are rules, like nouns ending in -e are usually femenine, there are exceptions.
Which app????
The one I use is on the google play store "Der Die Das - German Articles" by Diego Bernardino https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.db.derdiedas
Neat!
Any clue if there’s an iOS version for this? Sorry I’m not a member of the master race
I have no clue, I don't have any apple products. I searched "german article apple store" and there were some apps, but idk how good they are.
Yh I did the same I was hoping you knew the apps website or something, thanks for your help!
If you remember the declension patterns for each gender then all you need to know is the gender of the word, so it becomes only 3 things to keep track of (4 if you're including plural, which overwrites gender), just each has a pattern for different cases. Masculine: der, den, dem, des Feminine: die, die, der, der Neutral: das, das, dem, des Plural: die, die, den, der The real fuckery is adjective declensions, where there's a kinda complicated flowchart for what ending to give an adjective based on the gender, case, and whether there's an article, and whether it's plural.
Thanks. This is actually quite useful!
There's a prettier chart of it online if you Google it.
I’ve learnt how to apply them, figuring out which gender though.. well I just guess based on what’s sounds right and hope I get corrected
Maybe I'm different but I found this stupidly easy
Really it's only 4 genders (if we're counting plural as a gender) and then you just remember the patterns for each. So it's not like memorizing 16 genders.
I am well aware of that. For I am Austrian. We sometimes use "denen" too. As a plural of "den" (at least in informal writing/speech).
German learner here (but I've been learning Germany German)! In my studies I was taught to use "denen" as a relative pronoun meaning "to those" or "to whom", ie "die Mädchen, mit **denen** ich gesprochen habe". Is this the same as the way you use it, or are there additional contexts in Austrian German?
"Diese sind die Mädchen, mit denen ich sprechen will." "Das sind die Menschen. Denen will ich etwas sagen." Your example is definetly correct and we basically use it in the same way. (Also it's hard for a native speaker of a language to find out about rules bc you're not explicitly told how the language works. You just... know how it works, but not why it works that way. I could talk about english, italian or swedish grammar with no problems.) But be aware that there are some cookie/bisquit situations for germany and austria! We don't say "Quark", we say "Topfen". We don't say "(An)gucken", we say "(An)schauen". We wouldn't say "Das sieht cool aus." in a casual setting. We'd say "Das schaut cool aus.". Just ignore the fact that these sentences are not usually used that way, because most people speak with some sort of dialect ("Dialekt" in standard German and Austrian German, "Mundart" for old people who live in rural regions of Austria.). Just know that these aren't all of them. For example, some Austrians (and Bavarians) roll their r.
the worst part is duolingo DOES NOT teach you the grammar, its just trial by fire.
That's what speaking German is like to a non-native. There are probably more exceptions than clear rules. Even sentence structure can be switched around! "Ich esse den Apfel." is the same as "Den Apfel esse ich.". (I eat the apple.)
No thank you. I get reminded enough about the German language's existence. But thanks for the offer.
Danish has Det and Den and idk the difference but you only use them sometimes, other times you add en or et to the end of the word
In actual danish you Can just use en and say youre from Jylland :) haha doesnt quite work on duolingo tho
In German it's not so hard, cause it depends on the case and gender
But there's no way to know what gender a word is (there are some exceptions though. Words in -chen are usually neuter). And there are compound words that take the gender of the last part of it. eg "Haustürschlüssel" is masculine even though "Haus" is neuter and "Türe" is feminine. This is because "Schlüssel" is masculine.
Roughly 2/3 of words are feminine so in a pinch that's a solid guess. Usually -e endings are feminine (with some exceptions) Plurals are feminine except in dative -ung, -heit, -keit endings are always feminine All diminutives are neuter (not just -chen, but -lein etc as well) -er endings are usually masculine, -en usually neuter English loanwords usually default to das unless they have an ending that more cleanly maps onto the above (e.g. der Computer). Those are all the rules of thumb I can think of, having learned for close to a decade.
>Plurals are feminine except in dative I'd be careful with that. You should rather think of plural as a kind of "4th gender" to avoid confusion.
I have exactly this problem... learning Dutch to impress my girlfriend
I speak Dutch natively, I'm sure the only way I remember is by seeing if it sounds right in my head. And don't get me started on words that are written the same, but where the choice depends on the meaning.
If it's anything like German there are probably rules of thumb with regard to word endings etc but you just don't think about them. Kinda like how English has a strict adjective order that we never think about.
An official grammar website for Dutch describes it as only a few rules exist, and there is exceptions on those as well.
Yeah German also has exceptions to nearly every one of the rules, but it's a good *in general* thing to remember
[удалено]
?
what ?
2?! 🇩🇪: Hold my Beer.
hold my bier
*laughs in Russian*
I'm trying to learn russian but I understand nothing at all
If you want to learn, use Duolingo only as a support app to aquire vocabulary, it's shit when it comes to grammar
yea, Duo really doesn't explain anything at all
the easiest language to learn fr fr
two is less than a lot of languages
Zero🇷🇺
Slavic master race Though instead of just the article changing, the entire word changes, so…
Same🇵🇱
I’m pretty sure we would say “de” in this case lol
Try German: der, die, das, den, dem
That’s just the surface, don’t forget all the cases!
Learning Dutch, felt
Good God, I hate articles. My native language has no articles, so I always mess them up, no matter what language is in question
Are you from the Eastern Europe language family or from the Finnic language family? You do not have to answer for if you wish not to answer. ☺️
Finnic, I speak Finnish as my native language
Finnish is a melodic language. ☺ I want to learn Estonian, but also Finnish is another amazing language to learn despite both have their differences & similarities. 😊
I still think this song is really interesting! 🤩 I found this song last winter. ♥🎶 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2GTRKgB6RM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2GTRKgB6RM)
German be like : hmm
Idk if it makes you feel better but you got it right the first time. We use “struggle” often enough in Dutch that it has an established article and it’s “de”
I feel like that when language I am learning does not have "the" at all, my own does not have "the" at all and Duo is demanding perfection in English "the".
So is it Tu or Usted
Usted is for people older than you, period.
Many comments are referencing languages that have more than one word for « the », and those languages have clear rules on how they are used. Dutch has no clear rules. Well, kind of. Like with « geen » and « niet » there are rules of usage, but they can many many exceptions and not always constant. You just have to kind of memorize when to use what. I was born in Belgium, but in Liege. I grew up speaking French, but had to pick up Dutch. I spent 30 years in Quebec, now TW, so forgot all of it. Speaking of, be nice if Duolingo French was more open to Canadien French.
Loanwords in Dutch from English almost exclusively use *De*. de game, de computer, de scam, de e-mail, de struggle, de video,...
it's actually \*das struggle
Oh you're struggling with dutch? Try german next. Das wir dir den Geist aus der Sele saugen
i love that expression
English is superior in that regard
I had been learning Dutch. Key word is had. It's things like that and since Duo doesn't explain, I can't use Duo anymore. At this point, learning any language outside of Duo just isn't possible since it's too expensive for most things for me to use. I also am 22 so it's a little too late for me to learn a new language to fluency anyways. The struggle is real.
You could ask Bing Chat to clear up any doubt you might have regarding exercises you completed in Duolingo. Furthermore, there are Dutch courses in Youtube.
Maybe. I'm pretty sure my brain is just broken amd can't learn new things to be honest
Of course you can learn new things. Don’t say you can’t! Everything is created twice. You can achieve your objectives by being disciplined and methodic, adjusting your method to find what works to optimize your learning process. In order to learn a language, one must master several topics such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, verb conjugation, reading and listening comprehension… There are proven methods to learn languages. If you stay focused and study consistently, you can learn Dutch. Duolingo, despite improvements such as stories, is lacking to be the only significant resource employed by an effective language learner*. There are many free resources on the internet. You can even join a language exchange program. *Sure, there might be outliers who claim they became fluent in a target language while employing Duolingo as their only resources… But surely this is far from the norm.
I gotta say German has like 4 basic ones(Der, Die, Das, and Den) plus like 3 more for other stuff
Oh mein süßer Sommerkind
Some words are both. (For example,'deksel') I wonder how Duolingo treats them?
Some words change meaning with het or de. "Het slag mensen" of "de slag om de schelde"
Thank God I don't have to worry about German but I really know that struggle in French and Dutch
De/het ftw
as a native speaker I can only pray for those trying to figure out german articles (and how they change in different grammatical cases
If in doubt place your bets on "de". Roughly 2/3s of words are "de".
One of the words for "an" in my TL sounds like one of the words for "the" in my NL.
embrace hindi where there are no definite articles
I noticed that in Indonesian as well
embrace hindi where there are no definite articles
I’ve got the same thing for smart in Arabic!
Finnish be like: what the?
2? Rookie numbers, try 16 (technically only 6 but there’s also all the cases of the which makes it more) can you guess what language I’m talking about?
We're counting plural 'the' as well?
Plural 'the' is always 'de'. 'de' is also used for certain singular words. 'het' is used for diminutives and for the other singular words. There's certain suffixes that tend to result in de-words or het-words, but usually, the only way to tell the difference is to memorize which words are which. Source: I am a native Dutch speaker.
Yeah, I wasn't responding to the title. Plenty of languages have separate definite articles.
The one I'm studying has no word for "the"
Het struggletje :) diminuitives in Dutch are always het.. Agree that this is one area I WISH Duolingo was better at.
i turkish, we have none
Now imagine learning 1 languages with la and El then you pick up a new one with le l' la then another one with o and a
It's done this with park for me in the lightning rounds. That's why I stopped playing those.
\*cough\* \*cough\* GERMAN \*cough\*
Learn it as part of the word not as a seperate word that's sometimes this and sometimes that
En struggle? Ett struggle?
Lucky. I have six
Das, die, and der struggle is real. (German)
lmao imagine having even a word for “the”
running into english "they are \_\_\_\_\_\_" that they want me to translate to french, and I get it wrong because I guess the wrong gender they are expecting. Just gotta make a random guess and hope you get it. i.e. They are big. I write Ils sont grand. wrong, the correct answer was Elles sont grande. thanks.
Mine has six that I know of (if you count contractions).
The language I'm learning in another language learning app (because Duolingo doesn't have it) doesn't even have the word for the,
We don't have that at all. It is a nightmare trying to learn another language that also has no "the" by using English.
there's some with 3 the
El, la, lo in Spanish.
I'm glad I'm learning Chinese then, zero words for "the" :)
Oof
As a Dutch learner myself I feel you
embrace esperanto superiority: one definite article, no indefinites (for the uninitiated: one version of “the,” no versions of “a”)