de of het medeweten?
het medeweten
knowledge
noun
It is “het medeweten”.
Pronunciation, example sentences and the rest of the entry: medeweten
Forms
- Article
- het medeweten
- How common
- in everyday Dutch
In a sentence
Het gebeurde met haar medeweten.
It happened with her knowledge.
Hij deed het buiten mijn medeweten.
He did it without my knowledge.
De leraar had er geen medeweten van.
The teacher had no knowledge of it.
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 medeweten” rather than as “medeweten” 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.