Nouns and articles exercises Diminutives Diminutives at Wikipedia.org

When we connect two nouns to each other, we usually have to place -en between them.

In spoken Dutch, we usually do not (or hardly) pronounce the letter 'n', which makes it hard to determine whether you have to write -e or -en. On this page, you will find a few guidelines to distinguish between the connectors -e and -en.

We write -e if the first word of the compound noun:

1. is a person or object of which there is obviously only one
2. is not a noun (but an adjective, adverb, verb, etc.)
3. forms a fossilized combination with the second part

There are so many exceptions to the above rules, that it is always wise to check the spelling in a dictionary or at www.woordenlijst.org.

Connecting -e

1. The first word is a person or an object of which there is obviously only one:

2. The first word is not a noun:

Note that most compound words that start with a verb or adjective get no connector at all. This guideline simply tells you that if we do use a connector, it must be -e.

3. The compound is fossilized, i.e. the meaning of the compound word is not the sum of the meanings of its separate components

The last guideline must be really hard for non-native speakers!

Connecting -en

In general, we connect words by -en, unless they fall under one of the three categories above.

Apart from the distinction between -e and -en, we must be able to establish when to use -en or -s. The latter is another common connector, which we will discuss in detail on the next page.

We use the connector -en if the first word exclusively takes -en as a plural ending. Since this is the case for the majority of Dutch words, -en is the most common connector.