are written according to the rules of modern Dutch orthography. The forms in brackets are shortened forms that were occasionally used. As with the shortenings of the definite article, these are colloquial. een paard → 'n paard (a horse) een koning → 'ne koning (a king) eens konings → 'ns konings (a king's) enen koning → 'nen koning (a king) Nouns A distinction was made between strong and weak declensions. The weak declension had most cases with the ending -en in the singular, while the strong declension had other endings. This distinction wasn't as important in 19th century standard Dutch as it was in earlier Old and Middle Dutch. The two types were much more distinct in Old and Middle Dutch, but gradually became mixed together. The older strong plural forms disappeared so that all nouns became weak in the plural. In the singular the opposite happened: the weak declension was replaced with the strong declension in most nouns. The difference was then only relevant for the singular, the plural was the same for all nouns. The older standards of Dutch maintained a strict separation between the masculine, feminine and neuter gender. While this is not significant in the modern language without cases, it was important in the older standard because the masculine and feminine nouns declined rather differently. Masculine and neuter nouns declined the same, and were usually strong, with some nouns retaining the weak declension. Feminine nouns declined differently, and there was no strong-versus-weak distinction for them. Because the difference between masculine and feminine was disappearing or had already disappeared in the spoken language, some nouns tended to mix masculine and feminine endings. One will come across fixed expressions such as te zijner tijd (feminine dative singular) alongside destijds (masculine genitive singular). This confusion was largely eliminated when cases were abolished, but on the occasion that cases are used in modern Dutch, this confusion is very frequent in areas where the spoken language has only a single "common" gender. Thus, masculine and feminine case endings, when used nowadays, may be almost interchangeable. Masculine and neuter nouns The following declension was used for most masculine and neuter nouns. It had also come to be used for female proper names, but normal feminine nouns used a separate declension, seen further below. Strong nouns Most nouns had -s in the genitive singular. This was extended to -es when it would have