Dutch Angel

Hubby, so his says, has never failed a school assignment, test or exam (nerd!).

His shining record almost came to a crashing end because of my inability to differentiate a noun's gender. (Hubby can stop bitching because Hubby can also stop learning Dutch vicariously through me and do his own homework.) Up to this point, Hubby was a model student with my prima A+ grades. This week's assignment had me make adjectives agree with a specific noun. Dutch nouns have one of two genders. They are either "common gender" (that is , masculine or feminine) or neuter. Hein? Problem - my limited vocabulary (14 words, none of which were on the given word list) made it impossible for me to differentiate a gender, let alone a neuter... So, I applied the age old trick of probabilities, learned through years of multiple-choice exams, to complete my assignment - I considered everything to be masculine. The corrector kindly asked me to review the grammar lesson once again. My heel goed dictation part saved the whole assignment from resounding failure. Still, a "C" is a blemish on Hubby's otherwise pristine record. He doesn't have much to say in the matter...especially in Dutch.