English Articles

In English, knowing when to use 'a' or 'the' can be difficult. Fortunately, there are rules to help you, but you need to know what type of noun you are using. (Fortunately= kebetulan)

Grammar rule 1
When you have a single, countable English noun, you must always have an article before it. We cannot say "please pass me pen", we must say "please pass me the pen" or "please pass me a pen" or "please pass me your pen". Nouns in English can also be uncountable. Uncountable nouns can be concepts, such as 'life', 'happiness' and so on, or materials and substances, such as 'coffee', or 'wood'.

Grammar rule 2
Uncountable nouns don't use 'a' or 'an'. This is because you can't count them. For example, advice is an uncountable noun. You can't say "he gave me an advice", but you can say "he gave me some advice", or "he gave me a piece of advice". Some nouns can be both countable and uncountable. For example, we say "coffee" meaning the product, but we say "a coffee" when asking for one cup of coffee.

Grammar rule 3
You can use 'the' to make general things specific. You can use 'the' with any type of noun plural or singular, countable or uncountable. "Please pass me a pen" any pen. "Please pass me the pen" the one that we can both see. "Children grow up quickly" children in general. "The children I know grow up quickly" not all children, just the ones I know. "Poetry can be beautiful"- poetry in general. "The poetry of Hopkins is beautiful" I'm only talking about the poetry Hopkins wrote.

More uses of articles in English

Rivers, mountain ranges, seas, oceans and geographic areas all use 'the'. For example, "The Thames", "The Alps", "The Atlantic Ocean", "The Middle East".

Unique things have 'the'. For example, "the sun", "the moon". Some institutional buildings don't have an article if you visit them for the reason these buildings exist. But if you go to the building for another reason, you must use 'the'. "Her husband is in prison." (He's a prisoner.) "She goes to the prison to see him once a month." "My son is in school." (He's a student.) "I'm going to the school to see the head master." "She's in hospital at the moment." (She's ill.) "Her husband goes to the hospital to see her every afternoon." Musical instruments use 'the'. "She plays the piano." Sports don't have an article. "He plays football." Illnesses don't have an article. "He's got appendicitis." But we say "a cold" and "a headache". Jobs use 'a'. "I'm a teacher." Countries We don't use 'a' if the country is singular. "He lives in England." But if the country's name has a "plural" meaning, we use 'the'. "The People's Republic of China", "The Netherlands", "The United States of America". Continents, towns and streets don't have an article. "Africa", "New York", "Church Street". Theatres, cinemas and hotels have 'the'. "The Odeon", "The Almeira", "The Hilton". Abbreviations use 'the'. "the UN", "the USA", "the IMF". We use 'the' before classes of people. "the rich", "the poor", "the British".

Comments are closed. Still have a question? Ask in the Help Me English Q&A forum 96 Comments Iza (Should we use an article before a nationality...say...) Which is correct: Are you a Korean? or Are you Korean? Thanx :) soha As mentioned above that every job is attached with an ariticle "a".My doubt is its used for all types of job or in particular, what am I supposed to say when someone is engineer. He is an engineer. or He is a engineer. It should be "He is an engineer". hanna which of the statements is correct. 1:my hair is long. 2:my hair are long. Statement 1 is correct. naomi I've read the comments and one comment caught my attention bout the musical instruments..so it's ok to say "I play guitar." without the "the" Really, when not to use the articles.. Shilpi I would like to comment on the second comment @Himmel Sihombing... 'She plays piano' may also be used when she plays the piano as a part of her hobby or as a part of her job...

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Article (grammar)
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An article (abbreviated ART) is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an. 'An' and 'a' are modern forms of the Old English 'an', which in Anglian dialects was the number 'one' (compare 'on', in Saxon dialects) and survived into Modern Scots as the number 'ane'. Both 'on' (respelled 'one' by the Normans) and 'an' survived into Modern English, with 'one' used as the number and 'an' ('a', before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefinite article. The word some is thus used as a functional plural of a/an. "An apple" never means more than one apple. "Give me some apples" indicates more than one is desired but without specifying a quantity. This finds comparison in Spanish, where the indefinite article is completely indistinguishable from the single number, except that 'uno/una' ("one") has a plural form

('unos/unas'): Dame una manzana" ("Give me an apple") > "Dame unas manzanas" ("Give me some apples"). Among the classical parts of speech, articles are considered a special category of adjectives. Some modern linguists prefer to classify them within a separate part of speech, determiners. In languages that employ articles, every common noun, with some exceptions, is expressed with a certain definiteness (e.g., definite or indefinite), just as many languages express every noun with a certain grammatical number (e.g., singular or plural). Every noun must be accompanied by the article, if any, corresponding to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) itself specifies a certain definiteness. This is in contrast to other adjectives and determiners, which are typically optional. This obligatory nature of articles makes them among the most common words in many languagesin English, for example, the most frequent word is the.[1]

[edit] Types
Articles are usually characterized as either definite or indefinite.[2] A few languages with welldeveloped systems of articles may distinguish additional subtypes. Within each type, languages may have various forms of each article, according to grammatical attributes such as gender, number, or case, or according to adjacent sounds.

[edit] Definite article

A definite article indicates that its noun is a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener. It may be the same thing that the speaker has already mentioned, or it may be something uniquely specified. The definite article in English is the.
The children know the fastest way home.

The sentence above contrasts with the much more general observation that:
Children know the fastest way home.

Likewise(demikian juga),
Give me the book

has a markedly different meaning in most English contexts from

Give me a book.

It can also be used to indicate a specific class among other classes:

The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus.

But it should not be used to refer to a specimen:

*The writing is the human invention.

[edit] Indefinite article

An indefinite article indicates that its noun is not a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener. It may be something that the speaker is mentioning for the first time, or its precise identity may be irrelevant or hypothetical, or the speaker may be making a general statement about any such thing. English uses a/an, from the Old English forms of the number 'one', as its indefinite article. The form an is used before words that begin with a vowel sound (even if spelled with an initial consonant, as in an hour), and a before words that begin with a consonant sound (even if spelled with a vowel, as in a European).
She had a house so large that an elephant would get lost without a map.

Before some words beginning with a pronounced (not silent) h in an unstressed first syllable, such as hallucination, hilarious, historic(al), horrendous, and horrific, some (especially older) British writers prefer to use an over a (an historical event, etc.).[3] An is also preferred before hotel by some writers of BrE (probably reflecting the relatively recent adoption of the word from French, where the h is not pronounced).[4] The use of "an" before words beginning with an unstressed "h" is more common generally in BrE than American.[4] Such usage would now be seen as affected or incorrect in AmE.[5] American writers normally use a in all these cases, although there are occasional uses of an historic(al) in AmE.[6] According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English, such use is increasingly rare in BrE too.[3] Unlike BrE, AmE typically uses an before herb, since the h in this word is silent for most Americans.

[edit] Partitive article

A partitive article is a type of indefinite article used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. The nearest equivalent in English is some, although this is considered a determiner and not an article.
French: Voulez-vous du caf ? Do you want (some) coffee? (or, dialectally but more accurately, Do you want some of this coffee?) See also more information about the French partitive article.

[edit] Negative article

A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by no.

No man is an island.

[edit] Zero article

The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.[7] In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word "some" can be used as an indefinite plural article.
Visitors walked in mud.

Articles in some languages in and around Europe indefinite and definite articles only definite articles indefinite and postfixed definite articles only postfixed definite articles no articles

Among the world's most widely spoken languages, articles are found almost exclusively in IndoEuropean and Semitic languages[citation needed]. Strictly speaking, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Malay, and Russian have no articles, but certain words can be used like articles, when needed. Linguists believe the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, Proto Indo-European, did not have articles. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the Baltic languages and most Slavic languages. Although Classical Greek has a definite article (which has survived into Modern Greek and which bears strong resemblance to the German definite article), the earlier Homeric Greek did not. Articles developed independently in several language families. Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles, and some languages have different types of definite and indefinite articles to distinguish finer shades of meaning; for example, French and Italian have a partitive article used for indefinite mass nouns, while Colognian has two distinct sets of definite articles indicating focus and uniqueness, and Macedonian uses definite articles in a demonstrative sense, distinguishing this from that (with an intermediate degree). The words this and that (and their plurals, these and those) can be understood in English as, ultimately, forms of the definite article the (whose declension in Old English included thaes, an ancestral form of this/that and these/those).

In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the gender, number, or case of its noun. In some languages the article may be the only indication of the case, e.g., German Der Hut des Napoleon, "Napoleon's hat". Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old versus new information, such as topic-comment constructions.

In the above examples, the article always precedes its noun (with the exception of the Arabic tanween). In some languages, however, the definite article is not always a separate word, but may be postfixed, attached to the end of its noun as a suffix. For example,

[edit] Evolution
Articles have developed independently in many different language families across the globe. Generally, articles develop over time usually by specialization of certain adjectives. Joseph Greenberg [8][9] describes "the cycle of the definite article": Definite articles (Stage I) evolve from demonstratives, and in turn can become generic articles (Stage II) that may be used in both definite and indefinite contexts, and later merely noun markers (Stage III) that are part of nouns other than proper names and more recent borrowings. Eventually articles may evolve anew from demonstratives.

[edit] Definite articles

Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that. For example, the definite articles in the Romance languagese.g., el, il, le, laderive from the Latin demonstratives ille (masculine) and illa (feminine). The English definite article the, written e in Middle English, derives from an Old English demonstrative, which, according to gender, was written se (masculine), seo (feminine) (e and eo in the Northumbrian dialect), or t (neuter). The neuter form t also gave rise to the modern demonstrative that. The ye occasionally seen in pseudo-archaic usage such as "Ye Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe" is actually a form of e, where the letter thorn () came to be written as a y. Multiple demonstratives can give rise to multiple definite articles. Macedonian, for example, in which the articles are suffixed, has (stolot), the chair; (stolov), this chair; and (stolon), that chair. Colognian prepositions articles such as in dat Auto, or et Auto, the car; the first being specifically selected, focussed, newly introduced, while the latter ist not selected, unfocussed, already known, general, or generic.

[edit] Indefinite articles

Indefinite articles typically arise from adjectives meaning one. For example, the indefinite articles in the Romance languagese.g., un, una, unederive from the Latin adjective unus. Partitive articles, however, derive from Vulgar Latin de illo, meaning (some) of the.

The English indefinite article an is derived from the same root as one. The -n came to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form a. The existence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, e.g. transforming the original a napron into the modern an apron.

Indefinite articles - a and an (determiners)

1. A and an are the indefinite articles. They refer to something not specifically known to the person you are communicating with. 2. A and an are used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not mentioned before:"I saw an elephant this morning." For example: "I ate a banana for lunch."

3. A and an are also used when talking about your profession:"I am an English teacher." For example: "I am a builder."

You use a when the noun you are referring to begins with a consonant (b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y or z), for example, "a city", "a factory", and "a hotel". You use an when the noun you are referring to begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) Pronunciation changes this rule. It's the sound that matters, not the spelling. If the next word begins with a consonant sound when we say it, for example, "university" then we use a. If the next word begins with a vowel sound when we say it, for example "hour" then we use an. We say "university" with a "y" sound at the beginning as though it were spelt "youniversity". So, "a university" IS correct. We say "hour" with a silent h as though it were spelt "our". So, "an hour" IS correct. (Lots of people get this wrong - including native speakers.)

Note!

5. 6. Definite Article - the (determiners)

7. There are two ways to pronounce "the". One "thuh" and the other "thee". To learn when we use them see the pronunciation files: How to pronounce "the".

8. You use the when you know that the listener knows or can work out what particular person/thing you are talking about.
"The apple you ate was rotten." For example: "Did you lock the car?"

9. You should also use the when you have already mentioned the thing you are talking about. For "She's got two children; a girl and a boy. The girl's eight and the boy's fourteen." example: 10. We use the to talk about geographical points on the globe. For the North Pole, the equator example: 11. We use the to talk about rivers, oceans and seas For the Nile, the Pacific, the English channel example: 12. We also use the before certain nouns when we know there is only one of a particular thing. For the rain, the sun, the wind, the world, the earth, the White House etc.. example: 13. However if you want to describe a particular instance of these you should use a/an. For example: "I could hear the wind." / "There's a cold wind blowing." "What are your plans for the future?" / "She has a promising future ahead of her."

14. The is also used to say that a particular person or thing being mentioned is the best, most famous, etc. In this use, 'the' is usually given strong pronunciation: For example: "Harry's Bar is the place to go." "You don't mean you met the Tony Blair, do you?"

15. !Note - The doesn't mean all:-

For example:

"The books are expensive." = (Not all books are expensive, just the ones I'm talking about.) "Books are expensive." = (All books are expensive.)

16. 17.

18. No article
19. We usually use no article to talk about things in general:Inflation is rising. People are worried about rising crime. (Note! People generally, so no article) 20. You do not use an article when talking about sports. For example: My son plays football. Tennis is expensive.

21. You do not use an article before uncountable nouns when talking about them generally. For example: Information is important to any organisation. Coffee is bad for you.

22. You do not use an article before the names of countries except where they indicate multiple areas or contain the words (state(s), kindom, republic, union). Kingdom, state, republic and union are nouns, so they need an article. No article - Italy, Mexico, Bolivia, England For Use the - the UK (United Kingdom), the USA (United States of America), the Irish example: Republic Multiple areas! the Netherlands, the Philippines, the British Isles