Family
Family
Dutch grammatical gender doesn't track a person's actual sex at all, unlike English's natural-gender pronouns he/she — family words for people are grammatically 'common gender' regardless of who they refer to.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Family words are almost all de-words, regardless of the person's sex
de moeder (mother), de vader (father) — both 'de', no masculine/feminine article split
the mother, the father
English lost grammatical gender entirely centuries ago, so 'the' works for every noun regardless of the person referred to — you'd never expect 'the mother' and 'the father' to take different words for 'the.' Dutch kept a two-way de/het gender system, but — unlike German's der/die/das — it doesn't split by natural sex either: de moeder and de vader both take de. The person's actual gender only shows up in the pronoun (hij/zij), exactly like English's own he/she.
Possession with van instead of 's
de moeder van Jan (Jan's mother, lit. 'the mother of Jan')
Jan's mother
English mostly shows possession with 's attached to the owner (Jan's mother), though it also has the 'of' construction (the mother of Jan) for more formal or complex phrases. Dutch relies on the van ('of') pattern as its everyday, unmarked way to show possession — de moeder van Jan — rather than an -'s ending. Expect to reach for 'van + owner' by default, not an apostrophe-s equivalent, which Dutch doesn't have.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| Dutch | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| de moeder | duh MOO-der | mother |
| de vader | duh VAH-der | father |
| de broer | duh broor | brother |
| de zus | duh zuhs | sister |
| de oma | duh OH-mah | grandmother |
| de opa | duh OH-pah | grandfather |
| de zoon | duh zohn | son |
| de dochter | duh DOKH-ter | daughter |