This & That (deze, dit, die, dat)
This & That (deze, dit, die, dat)
English picks its demonstrative by distance and number alone: this/these for near, that/those for far. Dutch adds gender to the calculation, so a single English 'this' corresponds to two different Dutch words depending on whether the noun takes de or het.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Near: deze for de-words, dit for het-words
deze man, deze vrouw — dit huis, dit boek
this man, this woman — this house, this book
Both words translate as 'this'. Which one you use has nothing to do with meaning and everything to do with the noun's article: a de-word takes deze, a het-word takes dit. Because roughly three-quarters of nouns are de-words, deze is the more common of the two, but guessing will still go wrong often enough to notice.
Far: die for de-words, dat for het-words
die man, die vrouw — dat huis, dat boek
that man, that woman — that house, that book
The distant pair works the same way: die with de-words, dat with het-words. English 'that' covers both. A useful memory aid is that the vowel of the demonstrative echoes the article — de/deze/die versus het/dit/dat — which is not a coincidence, since both sets descend from the same demonstrative roots.
All plurals take deze or die, whatever the singular's gender
deze huizen, die boeken
these houses, those books
English changes form for the plural: this → these, that → those. Dutch does not add a plural demonstrative at all; it simply uses the de-word forms, since every plural noun takes de. So dit boek becomes deze boeken and dat huis becomes die huizen. The four Dutch forms therefore cover what English needs four different words for, but they are divided along a different line.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- this (with de-words)
- English
- this (with het-words)
- English
- that (with de-words)
- English
- that (with het-words)
- English
- this chair
- English
- this house
- English
- that car
- English
- that child
- English
- here
- English
- there
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