Our 100th Monthly Question Thread (MQT)! 🎉
We may retire MQTs and replace them with a single, longer-lasting thread – for instance a yearly or twice-yearly thread.
We began these MQTs over 11 years ago (!) to provide an easy way to ask questions. We wanted new users who didn't feel confident creating an entirely new post to be able to ask any question, big or small, without worrying about needing to search for whether it had been previously asked, and to hopefully be a magnet for the 'obvious' questions the community is asked repeatedly (e.g. the distinction between de and het) which could often clutter our front page.
Despite more activity on the subreddit than ever – we're one of the largest Dutch-learning communities on the Internet as of 2026 with 120k members and 5k monthly comments & posts – the last few MQTs have had very little interaction. I think this is owing to the fact that how users interact with Reddit has changed over the years. Two factors seem apparent:
With Reddit's search feature improving markedly since the days of 2015, and many people adopting the habit of simply appending "reddit" to their Google queries, many more users are searching for their question first – and finding it (we have 14 years worth of discussion, after all; most answers are already here somewhere). The problem with MQTs is that they 'bury' the questions and answers people provide to a degree, since MQTs don't turn up as readily in search results (Reddit or Google).
Secondly, fewer and fewer users browsing Reddit from laptops or desktop PCs, and only a miniscule number clinging to Old Reddit (I'm one of them). Around 80% of /r/LearnDutch's traffic is mobile users (iOS, Android, Mobile Web) as of September 2026. It's common for users to post questions to /r/LearnDutch without even visiting the subreddit; they compose their post, then select our subreddit as the most appropriate. That means MQTs are never seen to begin with.
Whatever the reason, our MQTs are seeing less engagement – sometimes garnering zero replies. There's no reason to continue posting them monthly. But question threads do have utility, so we're not abandoning them entirely. Expect the next question thread to be a long-lasting stickied thread, perhaps left indefinitely or for a year or so.
Anyway, enough rambling! Back to the usual content:
Monthly Question Thread #100
This thread is for any questions you might have. No question is too big or too small, too broad or too specific, too strange or too common.
You're welcome to ask anything related to learning Dutch. This includes help with translations, proofreading, corrections, social etiquette, finding learning resources, understanding grammar, and so on.
This is the question our community receives most often.
The definite article ("the") has one form in English: the. In Dutch, there are two forms: de and het. Every noun takes either de or het ("the book" → "het boek", "the car" → "de auto").
Oh no! How do I know which to use?
There are some rules, but generally there's no way to know which article a noun takes. You can save yourself some hassle by familiarising yourself with the basic de and het rules and, most importantly, memorise the noun with the article!
Useful resources for common questions
If you're looking for more learning resources, please check out our sidebar. (If you're using an app, you may need to click About or Info or the ℹ️ button for /r/LearnDutch.)
Ask away!