When a diminutive refers to a person, masculine or feminine pronouns may refer to the person instead of the neuter "het". However, the definite article, demonstrative pronouns, and adjective inflection remain neuter. An exception is "meisje", whose neuter gender is generally unknown by most people and which uses feminine pronouns even in formal speech. Unlike in German, grammatical agreement of the type *"kijk dat meisje, het kamt zijn haar" ‘look at that girl, it is combing its hair’ has been abandoned for diminutives of people, so that words such as "meisje" are now universally treated as a feminine word, although the agreeing neuter article "het" is retained. The same applies to "jongetje" ‘little boy’, "mannetje" ‘little man, manling’, "vrouwtje" ‘little woman’, etc.