"The apple"

Translation: De appel

[quiet_adventurer]

When do you use 'de' and when do you use 'het'?

[Simius]

It depends on the gender of the noun, which in most cases you have to memorize. See here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/3732938

[Lea785548]

That makes sense because Google says "de is for masculine and feminine nouns, meanwhile het is for the neuter" yet it's de appel oh boy!

[Robbadob]

Well, there's some truth to that, because Dutch did use to have three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, but then the masculine and the feminine merged, giving us common (de) and neuter (het).
You can see Scandinavian languages like Swedish already went through this too (en/ett), while German still has three (der/die/das) and English obviously has lost all gender (the).

[mckenzieholmes]

i got confuse because its did not have a d or a e for it can some help

[Rendi405]

You just need to type i the answer after clicking on one dot...

[AstroBadWolf]

Can someone tell me why is it 'de' appel and not 'het' appel?

[kim_chaesol]

So... basically I'm learning weird afrikaans?

[MichaelaMa387371]

Why is it de jongen but het meisje

[RuslanK.1]

why appeltje not appel?

[Celeste676926]

Appeltje is a "small apple". When you have "appeltje" you have to use "het" and when you have "appel" you have to use "de".
Just remember that when you make a word smaller (word+tje) it is always "het".