Het or de

In Dutch there are two articles for ´the´: de and het.

There are almost no rules for when to use which one, so it more or less comes down to learning them one by one. But it is good to know that the number of de-words is about twice as large as the number of het-words.

Here are three rules to keep in mind:

• In the plural, all nouns have the definite article de.
• Letters and numbers always have the definite article de.
• Diminutive nouns always have the definite article het.