# Linguistics: the prevalence of articles **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392 "2013-03-08T15:59:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/1 "2013-03-08T15:59:58Z")
English uses articles - a, an, the - on a frequent basis. This trips up a lot of people who speak English as a second language, particularly when their native language does _not_ make use of articles. My wife is Japanese, and although her English is generally excellent, she still sometimes leaves them out. I hear the same thing among speakers of, for example, Russian. So how common a phenomenon are articles? I’m aware that German, Spanish, French, and Italian use articles, but what about other languages? Is the use of articles relatively common, or relatively uncommon? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/2 "2013-03-08T16:13:21Z")
A lot of languages have them, a lot of languages don’t. I don’t know if there’s a generally accepted ratio. Even if we said, oh, 75 % of the languages we’ve recorded have articles, that doesn’t mean much as there could be lord only knows how many minority languages that don’t have them that no one’s gotten around to constructing a grammar for. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/3 "2013-03-08T16:26:09Z")
[There’s a map of Europe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) here with what languages use articles. (And keep in mind articles can also be suffixes, as they are in Bulgarian.) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/4 "2013-03-08T16:49:31Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > [There’s a map of Europe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) here with what languages use articles. (And keep in mind articles can also be suffixes, as they are in Bulgarian.) [Article (grammar) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) Fixed that for ya. That’s fine for Europe, but a similar map of Asian, African, or Native American languages would show vast areas of nothing. Arabic, Hebrew, and Samoan are among the few articled languages I can think of outside of Europe offhand. Several Asian language families, including Turkic, Indo-Aryan, and Dravidian, having no official indefinite article, use their words for the number “one” as stand-ins for the singular indefinite article, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t know about Australian and Papuan languages, but given the overall patterns worldwide, I would not be surprised to find them lacking articles too. Historically, definite articles tend to develop out of the demonstrative pronoun ‘that’. Hungarian comes from the no-article Uralic family and grew its definite article _a_ from the demonstrative pronoun _az_ apparently after the Magyars moved to Europe, under the influence of articled European languages. What’s known as an “areal feature.” The suffixed article in North Germanic and various Balkan languages is a textbook example of an areal feature. ---
**Author:** ![yearofglad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b782af/32.png) [@yearofglad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yearofglad)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/5 "2013-03-08T16:55:12Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > [Article (grammar) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) Fixed that for ya. [Article (grammar) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) Fixed that for ya. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/6 "2013-03-08T17:31:19Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Historically, definite articles tend to develop out of the demonstrative pronoun ‘that’. I was intrigued to read in the Wiki article about the cyclical evolution demonstrative –\> definite article –\> generic article –\> noun-marker –\> (semantic need for demonstrative) –\> … This reminded me of Dixon’s discussion (with Egyptian moving all the way around the cycle from fusional to fusional over 3000 years): isolating grammar –\> agglutinative grammar –\> fusional grammar –\> … (isolating) Do these two cycles tend to sync up? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/7 "2013-03-08T22:49:00Z")
> [@yearofglad](#): > > [Article (grammar) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)) Fixed that for ya. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/8 "2013-03-08T22:57:51Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I was intrigued to read in the Wiki article about the cyclical evolution > demonstrative –\> definite article –\> generic article –\> noun-marker –\> (semantic need for demonstrative) –\> … > This reminded me of Dixon’s discussion (with Egyptian moving all the way around the cycle from fusional to fusional over 3000 years): > isolating grammar –\> agglutinative grammar –\> fusional grammar –\> … (isolating) > Do these two cycles tend to sync up? Hmm, good question. I don’t think they do. You find articles in fusional languages like Ancient Greek or Arabic as well as the isolating grammar of Samoan.\* You find absence of articles in fusional languages like Lithuanian and Sanskrit. The one example of an agglutinative language with the definite article I can think of is Hungarian, and as stated above that was probably a result of external influence. The forces driving typological change seem to work independently of the forces driving the development of determinatives for all that I can tell. Though that is a particularly interesting example you gave for Egyptian, as well as the cyclical process of typological change in general. \*Incidentally, the Samoan word for “the” is _le_, same as in French. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/9 "2013-03-09T03:54:27Z")
One thing I’ve always wondered - how do languages without articles distinguish between, for instance, “put the book (= a specific book) on the table” and “put a book (=any book) on the table”? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/10 "2013-03-09T04:28:39Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > One thing I’ve always wondered - how do languages without articles distinguish between, for instance, “put the book (= a specific book) on the table” and “put a book (=any book) on the table”? Glad you asked! Although Turkish lacks articles, it can express definiteness nonetheless. In your example, anyway. When it’s a definite direct object, it uses the accusative case ending. When it’s an indefinite direct object, it doesn’t get a case ending. E.g. Put (some) book (or other) on the table: Masanın üzerine kitap koy. Put **the** book on the table: Masanın üzerine kitab **ı** koy. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/11 "2013-03-09T04:29:57Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > One thing I’ve always wondered - how do languages without articles distinguish between, for instance, “put the book (= a specific book) on the table” and “put a book (=any book) on the table”? I think they typically use words that mean “that” or “this” instead of “the”, and a word that means “one” instead of “a”. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/12 "2013-03-09T11:25:38Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Glad you asked! > > Although Turkish lacks articles, it can express definiteness nonetheless. In your example, anyway. When it’s a definite direct object, it uses the accusative case ending. When it’s an indefinite direct object, it doesn’t get a case ending. > > E.g. > Put (some) book (or other) on the table: > Masanın üzerine kitap koy. > > Put **the** book on the table: > Masanın üzerine kitab **ı** koy. Russian uses cases in a perhaps comparable way ‘ja pil vod_u_’ - I drank the water ‘ja pil vod_y_’ - I drank some water In the first case, you use the accusative; in the second, the genitive. Granted, the difference here is not so much between definite and indefinite, but rather between ‘all (of the) water’ v ‘some (of the) water’. Also, \*\*Giles \*\*is right that (at least Slavic) will “compensate” by using demonstrative pronouns more often. I use “compensate” hesitantly, because I don’t want to suggest that having def and indef articles is somehow a natural state of being for a language that, if absent, needs to be compensated for. By and large, articles are the exception not the rule. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/13 "2013-03-09T11:49:31Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > I think they typically use words that mean “that” or “this” instead of “the”, and a word that means “one” instead of “a”. But they (Japanese) only do that when there is some risk of ambiguity. Normally, context will be sufficient to determine whether a particular book is meant. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-the-prevalence-of-articles/652392/14 "2013-03-09T17:12:15Z")
Interesting aside, this is most likely how Donald Trump got his nickname “The Donald.” Ivana Trump referred to him that way in an interview and it was printed and reprinted as her cutesy nickname for him, when actually she probably just made a fairly common ESL error using articles that aren’t used in Czech.