Grammatica - loco

8
Pronouns
74
Doe de deur dicht! Nee, ik wil dat ze open blijft.
Shut the door. No, I want it to stay open.
Even in Holland abstract nouns may be replaced in formal style by
zij. This applies to abstract common gender nouns ending in:
-heid waarheid, eenheid, etc.
-ie commissie, politie, etc.
-erij uitgeverij, bakkerij, etc.
-nis kennis, erfenis, etc.
-ing regering, regeling, etc.
-st kunst, winst, etc.
-schap wetenschap, verwantschap, etc. 6
-de, -te liefde, begeerte, etc.
De regering heeft vandaag haar besluiten bekendgemaakt.
The government made its decisions known today.
De discussie vond haar hoogtepunt dertig jaar geleden.
The debate attained its climax thirty years ago.
Female animals, e.g. koe ‘cow’, merrie ‘mare’ etc., can be replaced
by zij but one does commonly hear the Dutch using hij with
reference to such animals:
Zie je die kat? Hij heeft net gejongd.
See that cat? She/it has just had kittens.
(c) There is an added complication in the translation of an ‘it’ referring
to common gender nouns. There are instances where an ‘it’ which
one would expect to be hij is in fact het. The rule is as follows: as
subject of the verb zijn (and less frequently of blijken, blijven, lijken,
schijnen and worden) the pronoun het is used to refer to all nouns
and persons (singular and plural) when:
1 the predicate (i.e. what follows the finite verb) contains a noun; or
2 the predicate contains an adjective used as a noun, but not when
the predicate contains simply an adjective on its own; then het is
used only for singular neuter nouns: 7
6 Note that some nouns ending in -schap are neuter: landschap, lidmaatschap (see 7.1.2.15
and 7.1.1.22).
7 This is identical to the use of ‘es’ in German as well as ‘ce’ versus ‘il/elle’ and ‘ils/elles’
in French.