Learn how to use Dutch adjectives
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| Hallo allemaal! Ik heet Gabriella. Hi everybody! I’m Gabriella. |
| Welcome to DutchPod101.com’s “Nederlands in 3 minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Dutch. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb hebben, “to have”, in the negative form. |
| In this lesson, we will start to learn about Dutch adjectives and how to use them properly. |
| So the basic rule to know is that in Dutch, adjectives come before the noun. Also, the adjective can change slightly depending on the gender of the noun, which article is used, and whether it’s singular or plural. |
| In Dutch, there are three articles - een, which means “a”, and de and het, which both mean “the”. We use de for feminine and masculine nouns, while we use het for neuter nouns. |
| Let’s give an example. Huis, which means “house”, is a neuter noun. When you want to say that a house is nice, you could say “That is a nice house”, Dat is een leuk huis. But you could also say “the nice house”, het leuke huis. |
| What’s the difference? “Nice”, leuk, changes slightly in the second form. So it’s leuk when you use the particle een, “a”, but when you use het, “the”, it’s leuke. So you just take the adjective, and add an –e at the end. |
| Pay attention, because this is only the case with neuter nouns! For instance, when you want to say that a woman is funny, the adjective doesn’t change even if you use different particles. You can say een grappige vrouw or de grappige vrouw. Literally, these mean “a funny woman” and “the funny woman”. |
| Vrouw means “woman”, and grappig is “funny”. As you can see, in both cases we use the adjective, grappig, and we add an –e at the end. It’s easy, isn't it? The same rule applies to adjectives combined with masculine nouns. |
| To recap, grappige, the adjective with an –e, is used with both masculine and feminine nouns, while grappig is used with neuter nouns, but only if the particle een is used instead of het. |
| Here are a few more examples of adjectives in both forms. |
| Aardig means “kind”. Depending on the noun, it can change to aardige. |
| Mooi means “beautiful”, and it can change to mooie. |
| And finally warm means “warm”, so it’s the same as in English! Warm can change into warme, again depending on the noun and the particle. |
| Now let’s find out how to use the adjective with a noun that is plural. It’s actually really simple, because we use the same rule as in singular - you just add an –e to the end! So with masculine and feminine nouns, the adjective stays exactly the same. Grappige vrouw, “funny woman”, in plural is grappige vrouwen. |
| The difference is that with neuter nouns, you add an –e to the end. So leuk huis, “nice house”, becomes leuke huizen. As you can see, leuk becomes leuke. |
| To practice this switch, let’s use another example. |
| When you want to say “a beautiful girl”, it is een mooi meisje. Mooi means “beautiful”, as we’ve seen, and meisje is “girl”. Meisje is a neuter noun, and because you use the particle een, “a”, the adjective is mooi. However, in plural it becomes de mooie meisjes, “the beautiful girls”. So mooi becomes mooie. |
| Now it’s time for Gabriella’s Insights. |
| If you want to emphasize an adjective in Dutch, you can use the words heel or erg before the adjective. For example, heel mooi which means "really beautiful" or erg lekker which means "really delicious." |
| In this lesson, we learned how to use adjectives in Dutch and how to make them agree with nouns. |
| Next time, we’ll learn the basic uses of the verb gaan, which means "to go," so that you will be able to say sentences like "I’m going to school." |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Nederlands in 3 minuten lesson! |
| Tot ziens! |
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