8 ms·

A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish: In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Whic

• asveikau 9d ago
  The further back you go in Indo-European languages, they don't have articles. It's a relatively recent innovation. So for example latin didn't have them. Eventually they evolved from ille and unus. Much of Eastern Europe still does not have articles.
  • rawling 9d ago
    > The further back you go in Indo-European languages, they don't have articles. Heh, while we're discussing English, this annoys me. "The further back you go" is a continuum, the effect you describe should be too. > The further back you go, the fewer Indo-European languages have articles. Or match a discontinuity with a discontinuity. > If you go back beyond a certain point, Indo-European languages don't have articles.
    • asveikau 9d ago
      I actually meant it as a continuum. In classical latin, ille and unus exist, but they are not articles. In the vulgar latin period circa 800ad, they are pretty close to articles. In modern romance they're articles. You can't say "beyond a certain point" because what point that is varies with geography.
  • Joker_vD 9d ago
    The whole (over)insistence on using the determiners in general seems to be a relatively recent innovation as well, the articles being a large part of it. I am talking about constructions like "he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet" — why not just "he shoved hand into pocket and pulled out wallet"? The context is pretty self-evident, and if you really need to specify some deviation from it (he shoved his hand into someone else's pocket, but still pulled out his wallet), you always can do it by, you know, using the determiners; except now they actually will be non-redundant.
    • breezybottom 8d ago
      I don't think the context is self evident at all. It's very important to know whose pocket he picked.
      • asveikau 8d ago
        I'm going to guess this could be a bias from speaking English. In romance languages, for example, you would often use an article rather than a possessive pronoun for this type of construct.
    • podocarp 8d ago
      Indeed that begins to sound like so called caveman talk. He shove hand in pocket and pull out wallet.
      • Joker_vD 8d ago
        And yet e.g. włożył rękę do kieszeni i wyjął portfel is a pretty natural-sounding Polish sentence. Grug trusts others not stupid.
• al_borland 9d ago
  I suppose you could say, “they are both doctors” or “they are all doctors.” Those sound fine to me, depending on context.
  • aldanor 9d ago
    Yes, but then it may sound as if "both/all" is being highlighted which it isn't in the neutral "they are doctors" statement
  • zelphirkalt 8d ago
    And there we get to the word both or all, where interestingly Mandarin has an (over)insistence on using it, even in places, where it seems unnecessary.
• cvhc 9d ago
  There is no plural equivalent of a/an. So where you would use a/an becomes no-article for plural nouns.
• bradrn 9d ago
  It’s simply that, in English, there is no indefinite plural article — or, equivalently, that the indefinite plural article is null. So ‘they are doctors’ is consistent with the behaviour of plural nouns elsewhere. Contrast this with, for example, French, where the indefinite singular un(e) correspond to the indefinite plural des: La boulangerie vend des baguettes ‘the bakery sells baguettes’ (whereas English cannot say *‘a baguettes’). But as in Spanish, professions take no article either way: Il est médecin / Ils sont médecins. So all three languages are self-consistent, just in their own ways.
  • hbn 9d ago
    English still feels hard to explain when things sound natural and when they don't. You can say "there are some vendors in the street" and it sounds normal. But if you were to say "they are some vendors" it sounds weird. It's pretty firmly more natural to say "they are vendors."
    • bradrn 9d ago
      Oh, certainly, as is the case for any language! In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, this is an insightful observation: you use ‘some <noun>’ specifically in order to say that there exists some set of things drawn from some larger set or in some configuration. You say ‘there are some vendors in the street’ because you’re drawing attention to their existence in the street (and indeed ‘there is/are’ is the prototypical English expression for existentials). You don’t say ‘they are some vendors’, because the use of ‘they’ implies some specific group of vendors already known to both speaker and listener — highlighting their existence again feels weird. (Of course, this analysis is still incomplete. At some point you simply have to list all the specific ways in which ‘some’ is used — which, indeed, is exactly what Huddleston & Pullum do. Furthermore I’m certain that there is some discourse context in which ‘they are some vendors’ would be natural, even though I haven’t managed to think of one just yet.)
      • schoen 9d ago
• Onavo 9d ago
  Is French different? Il est un médecin? Il est médecin? Ils sont médecins sounds fine.
  • TacticalCoder 9d ago
    Nope, it's basically as in spanish: > Il est un médecin? Nope that's bogus french: you say "il est médecin". But you can say: "c'est un médecin".
    • makeitdouble 9d ago
      > That's bogus To expand a bit, it's a perfectly valid use, but most people will forgo having an extra word that has no role in the phrase. "Il est médecin" and "Il est un médecin" are perfectly equivalent so people will choose the shorter. The "un" comes back when using the noun as an adjective isn't possible anymore, e.g. by adding an actual adjective "Il est un bon médecin"
• nutjob2 9d ago
  In "They are doctors" the 'they' is the subject and you don't need articles. 'They' is plural. But in "The doctors are female" you do because the subject is some specific group of doctors. It's singular because its a single group of things.
  • Joker_vD 9d ago
    > you don't need articles. 'They' is plural. But why not? Plural indefinite article exists in some languages, why not in English?
    • jacobsimon 8d ago
      I can’t speak about other languages but in my head the simplest reason is that English “a/an” specifies “one”, eg “I have a cat and two dogs.” I googled and confirmed a/an is Old English for “one” but otherwise they didn’t use articles. I assume it’s a similar origin story for other languages like “un/una/une”. In that case, it’s equally strange that other languages would make “one” plural imo.
      • thaumasiotes 8d ago
        > In that case, it’s equally strange that other languages would make “one” plural imo. Why? It's very common in English: I don't want those ones. In this case the number has been repurposed as a placeholder noun, and the noun is what's pluralized, but that's also what happens when the number is repurposed as a determiner and the determiner gets pluralized.
      • Joker_vD 8d ago
        There are some nouns that are always plurals e.g. "scissors" or "pants", and those things still arguably need indefinite/definite distinction, right? Actually no, the very use of plain "scissors" instead of "*a scissors" demonstrates very well the redundancy of the indefinite article, but let's pretend.
        • nutjob2 8d ago
• lozf 9d ago
  Certainly English can be odd. It can usually be understood through tough thorough thought though.
  • andsoitis 8d ago
    A thorough thought, though a tough one to plough through.
• pigpag 9d ago
  Over-learning Portuguese (as a beginner) almost make me feel that "He is a doctor" should become "They are as doctors".
• thayne 9d ago
  Interstingly it is the same in german, you would say "Er ist Arzt" not "Er ist ein Arzt". Which makes me wonder why english uses an indefinite article there, since it doesn't seem to be either germanic or romantic in origin.
  • 1-more 9d ago
    This was the root of the overblown Kennedy gaffe where he said “ich bin ein Berliner” instead of “ich bin berliner.”
    • arlcode 9d ago
      The thing is that doesn't even sound wrong and I don't think any native speaker would object to the article when used with a place of origin/belonging in a speech. It emphasizes the statement if you ask me. Only many years after learning of the speech I read online that it's allegedly "a gaffe".
      • ifloop 8d ago
        It's uncommon, but without thinking about it, I wouldn't have noticed that I wouldn't usually add the "ein" here. I think it emphasizes the affiliation to the group of people.
    • hasley 8d ago
      To me, "Ich bin Berliner" sounds relatively neutral, or like a short statement. "Ich bin ein Berliner" sounds a bit less direct or a bit softer to me because you state that you are just one of the citizens of Berlin. But this may be just my feeling. (In case you put the emphasis on "ein", you would clearly emphasize that you are just one of the many Berlin citizens.)
    • zelphirkalt 8d ago
      In this specific case the "ein" emphasizes/expresses that he "is one of us" to the Berliners. Not a gaffe at all, in my opinion.
• tzs 9d ago
  You are right most of the time for English, but today that should be "Arrr! He be the sawbones". Spain had pirates too, but I don't speak Spanish so had to ask an LLM. It suggested that today in Spanish it would be "Él es el matasanos del barco". Any authentic Spanish pirates who can verify or correct that?
  • ggambetta 8d ago
    Not a pirate but a Spanish speaker. Interestingly, He's a doctor [in general] -> el es médico He's the ship's doctor [this specific ship] -> el es el médico del barco He's a ship doctor [generally works in ships] -> el es médico de barco
  • pezezin 8d ago
    Matasanos is slang for a bad doctor of dubious talent, it literally means someone who kills healthy people xD
• emmelaich 9d ago
  You can say "they are the doctors" -- but yeah it's a slightly different meaning. BTW in German, it's a fun distinction. The old "ich bin (ein) Berliner". (or hamburger or frankfurter...)
  • normie3000 8d ago
    Works in English too: * I am Danish. * I am a Danish. Or * I am dancer. * I am a dancer.
    • sajithdilshan 8d ago
      “I am dancer” is acceptable if you’re a five year old. However “I’m Danish” is correct English
      • johannes1234321 8d ago
        In "I'm Danish" it's an adjective. With "I'm a Danish" it's a noun, stating you are a pastry.
        • bluebarbet 8d ago
          But only in US English!
        • sajithdilshan 8d ago
          You can say “I’m Danish” or “I’m British”. If you want to use an article and convey the same meaning then it would be “I’m a Dane” or I’m a Brit”
          • Izkata 7d ago
            I think you missed the joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry > A Danish pastry (sometimes shortened to Danish)
• totetsu 8d ago
  > Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors." Here the 'a' is shifting position to become the world final 's'
  • mdp2021 8d ago
    It is not the set-pertinence that would get transformed into a plural.
• d-us-vb 8d ago
  There’s an ongoing debate about whether articles are a proper part of speech; the only articles in English are the and a. Some grammarians prefer “determiner”, which includes a, the, some, other, no (as in “no man”) etc. A determiner is just a word that selects/determines an element of a larger assumed universe of discourse. Some grammarians deny the existence of determiners, as they are not found in traditional grammars of the language, with the words now considered determiners placed in other parts of speech.
  • bluebarbet 8d ago
    At last, some actual linguistics. The really common "determiners" are this, that, and possessive forms such as their and your. People often call those last words (your, his) "possessive pronouns", which always confused me because they are obviously not nouns. They are actually "possessive determiners", which is quite logical. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, etc.
    • IAmBroom 7d ago
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      • bluebarbet 7d ago
        Alas there is none but I can recommend the Lexicon Valley podcast.
• mdp2021 8d ago
  You should not look at superficial similarities between languages, but at logic. To the question: "What is he?", the answer can be "He is married, tall, doctor in medicine". On another point of view, "He is a doctor" = "one in the set of the doctors". (But which one of the crowd there? The tall one is the doctor.) "He is doctor in medicine": identity; "He is a doctor": aside property. With different expressions, you are not expressing the same thing, but different ideas (some of them more preponderant in use in a territory).
  • parasti 8d ago
    Similarities between languages is a much more intuitive approach for non-English speakers. This comment just explains an English idiom in terms of English idioms.
    • mdp2021 8d ago
      > Similarities between languages If they are substantial instead of superficial. > This comment just explains ... idiom in terms of the logic behind it. Which is common to many languages.
  • vanderZwan 8d ago
    I'm not sure why, but sentence feels forced and unnatural, and as a result a bit unconvincing. My intuition is to insert an "and" at the end of those three options and then it feels like you can't drop the "a", i.e. "married, tall, and a doctor in medicine". I mean, maybe you can but the sentence feels odd to me. And the weird part is that you can put those three properties in any order, and you would not place an "a" in front of the other two.
    • mdp2021 8d ago
      Do you also feel «forced and unnatural» "Il est médecin // il est un médecin // il est le médecin"? "Él es médico // él es un médico" // él es il médico"? Are you feeling through memory or through logic? Why would it work in some languages but not other related ones? What about "He is Commander, General, Loyal Servant, Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife"? > you would not place an "a" in front That is because 'tall' and 'married' are adjectives. So: "a tall fellow, a married man, and a doctor in medicine".
• Xmd5a 8d ago
  il est docteur vs c'est un docteur
• thinkingemote 8d ago
  English would work for titles: He is President. He is Doctor. (Dr.) "He is president" is different than "he is a president" (one among many) or "he is the president" (the one specific). But it would have to be within the context of titles With the specific case, the "the" could be dropped - "who is in running this rpg?" points "he is gamesmaster" which means "he is the gamesmaster". Probably because it's a role, similar to the title?
  • sajithdilshan 8d ago
    That sounds odd. Like in your example the nature answer would be “He’s the games master”. Without “the” article, one could get confused like okay is he the game master for this game or is he just a game master for some other game
    • thinkingemote 8d ago
      I think because someone wouldn't answer "he is a gamesmaster" to the example question, "who is running this rpg", it makes it less odd. If the Q was "who can run this game?" maybe then it would be ambiguous because it could imply others may also be a gamesmaster. So the context of dropping the "the" can only really happen when there's no ambiguity.
  • mr_toad 8d ago
    “He is President” works when it’s clear which position you’re referring to. “He is doctor” sounds wrong because there’s rarely just one doctor.
• zelphirkalt 8d ago
  And actually, it is not so common to write the actual personal pronouns in Spanish, as they become more or less clear seeing the verb ending, due to conjugation of the verb. So one would probably say "Es médico.", when in context.
• soyyo 8d ago
  In spanish you also have to use a/an: Es un perro (its a dog) Saying "es perro" makes no sense. The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it. Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male) If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a": Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
  • alpinisme 8d ago
    A good parallel in English is actually “going to (or being at) school.” While you can say you’re at “the” school or “a school”, they mean different things than just being at school. Ditto for UK “to hospital.” (Cf. to university, to college, to city hall, in government) Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 8d ago
    But he is totally right Spanish is more consistent in that respect, because it has a plural article. You can say "son unos perros" as well when you put that sentence in plural. Of course, that doesn't say anything about the languages in general, there are also things where Spanish is less consistent. E.g. why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"? I'm a native Spanish speaker and when asked by foreigners about a rule that would explain that, I've never been able to come up with one. I'm learning Chinese and my feeling is that it's more consistent than both Spanish and English, things actually tend to make a lot of sense in Chinese. A pity that between the tones and the characters, it's much harder to learn than either of them.
    • shmeeed 7d ago
      >why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"? I don't know if I'm quite qualified to lecture you on your mother tongue, but AFAIR that's because one is an unchangeable inherent quality (of the movie), and the other one is a temporary condition (of the weather). As a learner, I find Spanish/Castellano to be quite consistent, actually. It's normal that one's native language's quirks tend to be very difficult to explain, because you learned them intuitively. E.g. I was surprised to learn from conversations that a lot of Spanish speakers seem to have never heard what the subjuntivo is, and being told, couldn't explain for the life of them why they use it all the time.
• rags2riches 8d ago
  See also "he's in hospital" and "he's in the hospital" in British and American English.
• thaumasiotes 8d ago
  > But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?) That's just a historical quirk of the terminology. A(n) and the were named articles for no particular reason. They belong to a much broader part of speech, called "determiners", and some is a determiner just like they are.
• altern8 8d ago
  It's the same in Italian, but also the same in English. You say "he's president", not "he's a president", for instance.
  • dhosek 8d ago
    But that’s because that’s a situation where there’s only one president. If you were in a situation where there were multiple presidents you would definitely say he’s a president.
• mrmrcoleman 8d ago
  Same in French, Dutch, and probably other languages for “he is doctor” or “I am doctor”
• mococa 8d ago
  Same for Portuguese.
• eps 8d ago
  Same in French. It's just that professions are properties. > He is tall, he is smart, he is (a) doctor.
• tomjakubowski 8d ago
  then you have cases where English skips an article but Spanish does not, such as "what is science fiction?" vs. "¿qué es la cienca ficción?"
• saghm 8d ago
  I always thought that "some" was technically an article (the plural form of "a"/"an") but I hadn't considered how plurals weren't used in phrases like that. One thing I did notice about strangeness in English articles is how British English seems to use definite articles in places where American English uses indefinite ones. Back when reading Murder on the Orient Express in school, I remember finding it amusing how one character mentioned that he had "the toothache", which as an American to me sounded like he was saying there's only one toothache in the world that just travels around to me or something. Articles are weird. My very inexperienced impression is that maybe the only weirder thing is how inconsistently prepositions map to each other between languages, which never seems to be 1:1. Sometimes there's even variation within a language; I always grew up saying "by accident", so it sounds wrong to me when I hear someone say "on accident" but I also realize there's no objectively more correct phrasing.
  • dspillett 8d ago
    > the toothache As a native of England, “he had the toothache” sounds odd to too. I would say “he had a toothache” or just “he had toothache”. Though we aren't entirely consistent: “he had flu”, “he had the flu”, are both fine. “he had a flu” would normally sound wrong (though is technically correct, there are many flu viruses) but “he had a cold” is always fine. “he had the cold” only works in a context where it would be understood as a shorthand for something like “he had the cold that was going around”. > I always grew up saying "by accident", so it sounds wrong to me when I hear someone say "on accident" but I also realize there's no objectively more correct phrasing. If speaking actual English rather than a North American variant, “by accident” is objectively the correct phrasing. I'm not aware of any common accent from England in which “on accident” is used.
    • saghm 8d ago
      I just double checked and it's exactly what I remembered; the detective was interviewing someone explicitly described as being English (who in the same conversation said they had never been to America): https://esl-bits.eu/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/The%20Orient%20Express/07/text.html https://esl-bits.eu/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/The%20Or... > “I went to bed, sir, but I didn’t sleep.” > “Why didn’t you sleep?” > “I had the toothache, sir.” I'm inclined to trust Agatha Christie to have accurately reflected speech patterns that someone from England at least with a certain social status at a given point in time. Maybe it's not common anymore, or it used to be common in America as well back in the day. > If speaking actual English rather than a North American variant At this point you've at least disagreed with Agatha Christie about what English from someone from England sounds like, and now you're claiming that English as spoken by far more people than in England isn't "actual" English, so it's not clear to me that taking what you're saying at face value is worthwhile. It honestly seems like you have a bit of an inflated sense of authority about the language because the name of it happens to have originated with where you're from to the point where you're dismissive of anything other than your own direct knowledge, even when it's from a world-renowned author who has the same regional source of authority as you.
• dspillett 8d ago
  The other way around, Spanish uses the definite article where English would not: • Tengo los ojos azules -> I have blue eyes (not I have the blue eyes) • Juego el tenis -> I play tennis (not I play the tennis) Though as with the indefinite article, at least there is no discrepancy between single/plural. In part it is necessary because there are some words that don't vary their spelling in different genders but do have different meaning: • la papa -> the potato, el papa -> the pope (also el papá -> the dad) • la capital -> the capital (as in city), el capital -> the capital (as in money) • la corte -> the court, el corte -> the cut [I had to look those up to check, I'd have had cut/court back-to-front otherwise!] Another thing that doesn't exist in English is an equivalent to the “personal a”: vi a Fred -> I saw Fred, vi cuatro gatos -> I saw four cats (both languages use a definite or indefinite article for a single non-personal subject: vi un gato / vi el gato -> I saw a cat / I saw the cat). I suppose it could be said that Spanish is more consistent here too: there is always something in that position for simple forms, be it a count, an article, or a. I say “for simple forms” as there is nothing there for thing like “vi oscuridad en sus ojos” -> I saw darkness in his/her eyes (though in both languages either definite or indefinite article would also work but might suggest different emphasis: I saw a darkness in… / I saw the darkness in…).
  • byte_0 8d ago
    Something that Spanish has, that your "vi a Fred" example reminded me of is that when the direct object of a sentence is a person, you use "a": "vi a Fred", "escuché a mi mamá". Unlike unhuman objects: "vi el carro", "escuché un ruido".
    • dspillett 8d ago
      That is exactly what I referred to: the personal “a”. Used when referring to a person.
• arbitrary_name 8d ago
  interestingly there is "ellos son unos payasos" = they are clowns: a judgement, not a statement about their employment