Slavic languages (and maybe baltic) don't have them (probably also ugro-finnic ones), not sure about e.g. basque or hellenic ones. Balto-Slavic comes from prot

Slavic languages (and maybe baltic) don't have them (probably also ugro-finnic ones), not sure about e.g. basque or hellenic ones. Balto-Slavic comes from proto-indo-european and we have similar words (here in English / German / Polish) 'the' -> 'die' -> 'ten' (this) 'a/one' -> 'ein' -> 'jeden/jakiś' (one/one of many) which come from the same PIE roots, but we don't use them as often. We generally understand from context whether we're talking about something specific or general. And only use those helpers when we need clarification. There are also other ways to differentiate. For example speaking in singular (cat/kot) may mean 'a specific cat', but saying 'cats/koty' may mean 'a cat/cats'. In other words, using 'the/a' is in majority of cases unnecessary from our point of view, because if we're talking about 'our cat' for an hour, we don't need to stress that it's 'the cat' that I meant when I said 'cat', or when we say 'Please feed cat' and we have a cat, it's way more likely that it's about our cat than some random cat on the street. And this creates enormous problems for us when learning English or German (not sure about romance languages). We often ask ourselves, if we know whether we're talking about something specific or in general should we always use 'a/the -> ein/die'. And the answer is 'pretty much'. Unless you don't use it :) 'Love is a powerful emotion', and not 'A/The love is a powerful emotion', and even more elusive cases where those articles are not used.