tendency towards accusativism in early modern Dutch (16th and 17th centuries). This was the tendency to use the accusative case in the role of the nominative. When cases fell out of use later, the nominative was the one that survived, but in areas with accusativism these forms historically belonged to the accusative case. Unlike the old nominative, the accusative had a clear distinction between masculine and feminine forms. As it was these forms that survived in southern Dutch, the genders remained naturally distinct, and remain so up to the present day. In addition, Southern Dutch developed a separate indefinite article for neuter words—"e" or "ee(n)"—which is pronounced as a schwa (IPA: ə). Similar to English "an" versus "a", this article is not used when the following word starts with a vowel or a h-; rather "een" ('n) is used in those cases. The following table shows the points where the southern dialects differ from the standard language. As the dialects themselves are not standardised, different forms may be found in different areas, although differences have lessened in the Tussentaal, the Dutch regiolect in the Region of Flanders. Example 1: (vrouw is feminine) Southern: Heeft u mijn vrouw gezien? Standard: Heeft u mijn vrouw gezien? English: Have you seen my wife? Example 2: (auto and boom are masculine) Southern: Ik heb mijnen auto onder dienen boom geparkeerd. Standard: Ik heb mijn auto onder die boom geparkeerd. English: I parked my car beneath that tree. Example 3: (appartement and dorp are neuter) Southern Ik woon in een appartement in e klein dorp. Standard: Ik woon in een appartement in een klein dorp. English: I live in an apartment in a small village. Gender-neutral language Unlike English (with the use of "they" as the singular gender-neutral pronoun) or Swedish (which developed the new gender-neutral pronoun "hen"), Dutch did not develop a gender-neutral pronoun. As a consequence, Dutch employs a variety of means to accommodate cases where the gender of a person is not known. Standard solutions include the use of degene ("the one"; unstressed) and diegene ("that one"; stressed). More formally, the word alwie ("any(one) who") may be employed. In recent years, 'hen', 'die' (demonstrative pronoun) and 'hun' and 'diens' (possessive) gained more popularity but is not yet in common use. Comparison with German As Dutch is closely related to German, Dutch words tend to have the same gender as their close cognates