de of het joch?
het joch
young boy
noun · /jɔx/
It is “het joch”.
Pronunciation, example sentences and the rest of the entry: joch
Forms
- Article
- het joch
- Diminutive
- het jochie
- How common
- among the 5,000 most common Dutch words
In a sentence
Het joch rende snel naar huis.
The boy ran quickly home.
Het jochie vroeg om een koekje.
The little boy asked for a cookie.
Ze hielp het joch met zijn fiets.
She helped the boy with his bike.
Why this article
No rule predicts it
This one has to be memorised. No spelling pattern marks it as neuter, which is exactly why it is worth learning as “het joch” rather than as “joch” on its own.
The rules that do work
- • Every plural takes “de”, without exception.
- • Every diminutive ending in -je takes “het”, without exception.
- • Nouns ending in -ing, -heid, -tie, -teit or -schap take “de”.
- • Roughly two thirds of all nouns take “de”, so it is the better guess.
Other nouns whose article has to be memorised
Stop guessing de and het
Woordje has a practice mode for exactly this: it shows a noun and asks for the article, and keeps asking until you stop getting it wrong.