Questions & Answers about Het meisje is jong en blij.
Why is it het meisje instead of de meisje? Isn't a girl a person?
In Dutch, all words ending in -je are diminutives (words used for small things), and all diminutives are het words. So even though a girl is a female person, the grammatical rule for the -je ending makes it het meisje.
If I replace Het meisje with a pronoun, do I use zij (she) or het (it)?
You use zij or ze (she). Even though meisje is a het word grammatically, it refers to a female person. Dutch speakers naturally use zij to say "she" when talking about a girl.
This lesson teaches plural verbs and pronouns. How would I say "The girls are young and happy"?
You would change the sentence to De meisjes zijn jong en blij. In the plural, het words always change to de. You also swap the singular verb is for the plural verb zijn (are).
Why don't the adjectives have an -e ending here?
Adjectives usually only get an extra -e when they are placed directly in front of the noun they describe. Because jong and blij come after the verb is in this sentence, they stay in their basic, dictionary form.