Exceptions

There are some common exceptions to the rules for the declension of attibutive adjectives: adjectives ending in -en and some ‘new’ adjectives that are borrowed from other languages.

Adjectives ending in -en

Adjectives that end in -en never receive the ending -e.

Most of these are adjectives describing materials. For example:

de tafel is van hout → een houten tafel
the table is (made) of wood → a wooden table

mijn ring is van goud → een gouden ring
my ring is (made) of gold → a golden ring

Some other adjectives just end in -en, e.g. the word open. They behave in the same way:

Heb je het boek ‘Gevangenis met een open deur’ van Jan Terlouw al eens gelezen?
Have you ever read the book ‘Prison with an Open Door’ by Jan Terlouw?

Many past participles of verbs also end in -en­. When used as an adjective, these past participles behave in the same way (i.e. they do not receive an end -e):

Toen ik gisteren thuis kwam, stond ik voor een gesloten deur.
When I got home yesterday, I came to a closed door.

Compare:

Toen ik gisteren thuis kwam, vond ik een geopende fles wijn in de koelkast.
When I got home yesterday, I found an opened bottle of wine in the fridge.

‘New’ adjectives

On the whole, when new adjectives are added to the language, or when adjectives are ‘borrowed’ from other languages, they are declined like all other adjectives. There are some, however, whose adaptation to the Dutch grammar system is not so simple. The adjective plastic for instance, does not decline:

Deze winkel geeft geen plastic tasjes meer weg.
This shop no longer provides plastic carrier bags.

Some recently imported English words like cool can be declined, but language users tend to avoid having to do so. So, even though a sentence like Dat is een coole tas can be heard, it is preferable to say Die tas is cool.