Every Dutch noun is either de or het, and there is barely a rule to lean on. Type any noun — you get the answer, and the reason it sticks.
Most guides pretend de and het are fully predictable. They are not. Here is what you can actually rely on — and where you just have to learn the word.
Any noun ending in -je (huisje, meisje, kopje) is always het. No exceptions. This is the one rule you can fully trust.
Every plural noun takes de, even when the singular is het: het huis, but de huizen. Gender only matters in the singular.
Articles stick through repetition, not explanation. Quiz yourself on real A2 nouns until de and het come without thinking — the way they need to on exam day.
Save the words you miss with the checker above, then drill them here. When you want every het-word for the exam in one place, the Grammar foundation takes it further.
verdriet
sadness
There is no single rule that covers every noun. A handful of endings are reliable — diminutives ending in -je are always het, and all plurals are de. Beyond that, roughly two out of three Dutch nouns are de-words, so when you have no rule and must guess, de is the safer bet. But the honest answer is that most articles are learned with the noun, which is why this checker shows you the article and the rule together.
Yes, but they are tendencies more than laws. Diminutives (-je) are always het and plurals are always de — those never fail. Endings like -heid, -teit, -ing, -tie and -schap point to de; -isme, -ment and Latin -um point to het. This checker applies these patterns and tells you when a word is a genuine exception you simply have to memorise.
About two thirds of Dutch nouns are de-words and one third are het-words. That is why guessing de is right more often than not — but for the inburgering exam and real writing, guessing is not enough, so practising the het-words specifically pays off.
Yes. The wrong article is one of the most common mistakes in the A2 and B1 writing (schrijven) section, and using de and het correctly makes your Dutch sound noticeably more fluent in speaking. Getting the article right is low-effort, high-reward exam preparation.
Vocabulary, grammar, and all five DUO sections — Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking and KNM — in the real exam format, with AI-scored writing and speaking.