Gender Agreement in Dutch

Grammatical genders are merely a system of categorizing nouns. While grammatical and biological gender often coincide, it is not always necessary that they do. For example objects that are not people or animals do not have biological gender, so it is merely the words used to describe them that have gender, not the objects themselves.

Unlike most European languages which make a distinction between masculine and feminine nouns, modern Dutch for the most part uses the grouping common and neuter.

Historically Dutch was much more similar to German, having three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) as well as marked declension for case. Modern Dutch however has lost most of these distinctions. The masculine and feminine genders have all but combined and case is no longer marked except for personal pronouns.