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The article briefly touches it but doesn't really expand on "the", which is every bit as weird to outsiders as German genders or Karbadian "I mean it". So, "th
by yongjik 8y ago
The article briefly touches it but doesn't really expand on "the", which is every bit as weird to outsiders as German genders or Karbadian "I mean it".
So, "the father" is something like "Not just any father, but a particular father, and we can assume that we both know which particular father we're talking about."
Next time anyone says "language X is so weird, they have an expression for Y!" think about how to explain "the" to, say, speakers of Mandarin. :)
- paraditedc 8y agoThere are equivalent articles in Chinese. a -> yige "一个" the -> zhege "这个"/ nage "那个＂ And of course words like "my", "our" which are used in place of articles are there as well. You might not need the articles when the context is very clear (which causes problems for Chinese speakers when they try to learn English), but the concept is there. I believe it's the same in Japanese. Can't comment on other languages though.
- microcolonel 8y ago> I believe it's the same in Japanese. Can't comment on other languages though. English is quite varied; takes similarly to eliding subjects, at times.
- umanwizard 8y agoDon’t those mean “this” and “that” ? “This”, “that”, and “the” are similar because they’re all determiners that express definite ness (whereas “a” is a determiner that expresses indefiniteness), but mean something clearly different in English.
- gpderetta 8y agoFWIW, in Italian, and I think other romance languages, definite aricles come from the words used for 'this' although evolved to something district.
- yongjik 8y agoI'm sure there are Chinese words that can serve the same purpose. The point is that they aren't mandatory. So, to an English learner coming from these languages, a sentence like "I was cleaning attic and found book" is perfectly understandable. Exactly what attic and what book we're talking about should be apparent from context. On the other hand, in actual English, "I was cleaning the attic and found a book" portrays a different picture from "I was cleaning an attic and found the book." Use one when the other is warranted, and it sounds weird and confusing.
- nerdponx 8y agoInterestingly, Latin also lacked both "a" and "the", whereas their equivalents appear in Romance languages more than in English.
- zapzupnz 8y agoA consequence of the Romance languages simplifying/removing declensions, I suspect.
- burfog 8y agoBut then we have "I was cleaning house and found Kevin." too. Both "a Kevin" and "the Kevin" would feel weird, especially "the Kevin". One might do it on purpose as a sort of joke, implying that Kevin is an ordinary inanimate object. More oddness is that "cleaning up" doesn't involve an "up".
- Declanomous 8y ago"You'll never guess who I saw?" "Who?" "Elvis" "Elvis? The Elvis or a Elvis?" "The Elvis" The doesn't imply someone is inanimate, it just means that they are a specific one.
- HuShifang 8y ago这个 / これ mean more "this" whereas 那个 / それ or あれ mean more "that" (with a finer distinction in the Japanese). Their meanings are relative to the speaker - there is no absolute definite article. (I'll say too, even these relative specifiers were seldom used in classical Chinese.)
- dsego 8y agoIn languages without definite articles you can always use a word like "this" or "that" when clarification is needed.
- gerdesj 8y agoDer Vater oder ein Vater? German has a definite article and an indefinite article just like English. Now, I don't generally have to worry about gender (per se) in most of my nouns but it is bloody hard remembering whether a table is masculine (DE) or feminine (FR, IT).
- danmaz74 8y agoTo complicate things, in Italian "table" exists both as "tavolo" (male) and "tavola" (female). The female version is more often used for "plank" than "table", except in some specific expressions like "andare a tavola" (let's sit at the table to eat). No idea why.