ministerie "ministry" is neuter. Neuter nouns Diminutives are always neuter. They end in -je in the standard language, but the suffix -ke is also used in many dialects. bloempje ‘floret (small flower)’ lammetje ‘lambkin (little lamb)’ meisje ‘girl’ (literally ‘little maiden’), counterintuitive as clearly feminine (identical to German Mädchen ‘girl’, n.) When a diminutive refers to a person, masculine or feminine pronouns may refer to the person instead of the neuter het. However, the definite article, demonstrative pronouns, and adjective inflection remain neuter. An exception is meisje, whose neuter gender is generally unknown by most people and which uses feminine pronouns even in formal speech. Unlike in German, grammatical agreement of the type *kijk dat meisje, het kamt zijn haar ‘look at that girl, it is combing its hair’ has been abandoned for diminutives of people, so that words such as meisje are now universally treated as a feminine word, although the agreeing neuter article het is retained. The same applies to jongetje ‘little boy’, mannetje ‘little man, manling’, vrouwtje ‘little woman’, etc. Nouns prefixed with ge- and related prefixes with no suffix are neuter, especially if they are collectives derived from a verb stem: gezicht "face" geslacht "gender, sex" geluid "sound" geloop "walking" gezeur "whining" verschil "difference" ontbijt "breakfast" bedrijf "company" Collective nouns prefixed with ge- and suffixed with -te are neuter: gebergte "mountain range" geraamte "body frame, skeleton" gesteente "rock" (an aggregate of stones) Nouns prefixed with ge- and suffixed with -te are feminine if they are abstract concepts, such as gedachte "thought". Names of towns, countries and languages are always neuter, even if they are clearly derived from a masculine or feminine noun: Brussel "Brussels" Nederland "the Netherlands" (land is also neuter) Frans "French (language)" Roermond (mond is masculine) The exceptions are formed by countries or regions that contain a masculine or feminine article as part of their name: de Randstad (stad is feminine), de Soedan, de Congo, etc. The following suffixes that are borrowed from Latin or Greek are neuter: -isme – socialisme "socialism" -ma – thema "theme" -um – museum "museum" There is one notable exception, datum ‘date’, which is masculine and has both a regular nativized plural in datums (considered wrong by some speakers) and the original Latin neuter plural in data. The Southern Dutch regiolect Southern Dutch consists roughly of all dialects south of the river Meuse. In these dialects, there was a