the genitive case in expressions involving tot ... toe: tot vervelens toe, (until boredom set in) tot bloedens toe (until bleeding occurred) Dative The dative (datief or derde naamval) was used in the following cases: Indirect object: Hij gaf hun het boek (He gave them the book) After the preposition te: ter plekke (on site), ten einde (at the end) After prepositions with a figurative meaning: in den beginne (at the beginning) In modern Dutch, the dative case is technically still required after the preposition te (to). However, this preposition itself has fallen out of use, and is found only in fixed expressions. These expressions tend to keep the original dative form. For example, ten slotte ‘finally’, te allen tijde ‘at all times’. It is also used somewhat productively for placenames without any case marking. For example, Het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam ‘The National Museum in Amsterdam’. Even this is still dated to some degree. Gerunds in -ing (which are feminine) can still be combined with ter (e.g. ter herdenking ‘to commemorate’) and enjoy a modicum of productivity, like ter wikifiëring ‘to be wikified’, which is certainly acceptable Dutch. Accusative The accusative (accusatief or vierde naamval) was used in the following cases: Direct object: Jij sloeg mij (You hit me) Object of a preposition other than te: door mij (by me), bij hen (at their place) The accusative case was left for objects of transitive verbs and objects of all prepositions except for te. However, as distinctions between the grammatical cases were only weakly felt among speakers of Dutch, the feminine and neuter declensions were identical in the nominative and accusative, and the masculine declension was identical for the accusative and dative, endless confusion reigned. Articles Definite article The forms in brackets are shortened forms that were occasionally used. They were somewhat colloquial. des morgens → 's morgens (in the morning) het paard → 't paard (the horse) The preposition te contracts with a following definite article: te den → ten, te der → ter. Compare this to German zum, zur. te der plaatse → ter plaatse (on the spot, on site, at the scene) te den tijde → ten tijde (at the time) Indefinite article Because Dutch had many spelling reforms, some forms had different spellings in the past. The stem was formerly spelled een- regardless of the ending, so eenen, eener etc. The modern spelling, given in the table,