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Which languages have ’the’s and ’a | ||
Tags: Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 1 of 13 20 October 2009 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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My guess is that only western European languages have 'the' and 'a's.
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| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6381 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 2 of 13 20 October 2009 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Careful with what you mean by "Western European". They don't exist in Latin.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 3 of 13 20 October 2009 at 3:57am | IP Logged | ||
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There are Eastern European languages with articles, such as Hungarian and Armenian. Also, Hebrew and Arabic both have a definite article ("the").
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 13 20 October 2009 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I know that Japanese, Chinese, and Russian (and other Slavic languages?) don't have them.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 13 20 October 2009 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
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My understanding is that while definite articles are quite common around the world, very few languages outside of
Europe have both definite and indefinite articles. This is interesting, since they seem to be independent developments in all the European languages that have them. (Latin had no articles, PIE had no articles, Greek had no indefinite article, etc.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5922 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 6 of 13 20 October 2009 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Look at this map for europe.
Hindi has no definite or indefinite article, but 'ek' can be used as a sort of definite article. Arabic has 'al-', and for indefinite you either leave it alone or put a 'un' at the end (I forgot what the 'un' was for. I remember that the process is called 'nunation'). Edited by lynxrunner on 20 October 2009 at 4:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snoppingasusual Quadrilingual Hexaglot Groupie Lebanon Joined 5567 days ago 49 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian), French*, English*, Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (Levantine)*, Spanish | Message 7 of 13 20 October 2009 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
The un or ٌ is not the only thing you can add to make a word indefinite. ً ٍ can also be added depending on the word's position in a sentence. Edited by snoppingasusual on 20 October 2009 at 5:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 8 of 13 20 October 2009 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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By Western European languages I was thinking of the Germanic and Romance languages (but I was wrong b/c Hungarian and Greek have 'em according to the map above)
Korean and Japanese have 그 (Geu) and その(Sono) respectively, which I think is similar to 'the'. I think it's weaker than 'that' but stronger than 'the.' I'm guessing the Hindi 'ek' is the same concept? Would the Hebrew and Arabic versions of 'the' be the same as the Korean and Japanese 'Geu' and 'Sono'? Edited by sebngwa3 on 20 October 2009 at 6:52am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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