Military university of the Russian Defence Ministry, Russia, Moscow
The article deals with the problem of blurring the distinctions between masculine and feminine genders in modern Dutch. The author has come to the conclusion that mostly social changes in the Dutch society of the second half of the 20th century have had an impact on that process, namely the women had been given the same rights as the men had. It occurred under the influence of feminist movements, whose members demanded gender equality. The Dutch has responded to such changes in the social system. The author analysed the works of Dutch leading linguists, in which there is the concern in the current state of the language. The study of Dutch media shows that there are no longer formal distinctions between the two genders in modern Dutch. The determination of the genders has basically the conditional nature. Nevertheless, a few decades ago the gender of word was clearly determined in accordance with its form or pronoun that could replace that word. After conducting the study, the author hypothesizes the total gender loss in Dutch in the near future.
Dutch language; category of gender; social processes in society
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