In Dutch, as in English, nouns are words that describe things, people, animals, or concepts. Initially, we'll focus on singular nouns and their definite articles to form the simplest sentences.
Definite Articles: Dutch uses articles to specify the noun they accompany. Dutch has a gender system for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. However, unlike many other languages with gender systems, Dutch combines masculine and feminine articles into de, while het is used for neuter nouns. The choice of article depends on the gender of the noun.
Singular Nouns: We will start with singular nouns - that is, just one item or concept. Some common singular nouns we will see are appel (apple), hond (dog), and boek (book).
Pluralization: Dutch plurals are typically formed by adding -en or -s to the noun. Appels, honden, and boeken are examples of the plural forms of the nouns mentioned above. We will introduce a few plural forms to prepare for future exercises involving number and quantity.
Let's start with learning some basic vocabulary and their corresponding articles in Dutch.
