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| [statue of St. Pierre - Rome*] |
While all languages have nouns, verbs and adjectives, the shy article
identifying whether the noun is general or specific, the and a
for English speakers, is a fascinating demonstration of the variety of
approaches to defining ideas and how they affect second language learning. To
demonstrate, English, French, Hebrew and Russian all have different rules for
specifying nouns, which can often indicate the native language of writers when
they write in another language, English in this example.
As a base line for this post, English article rules, granted a
potentially controversial approach, distinguish general and specific nouns,
ignore gender and sometimes allow the article to be optional. As a rule, the
word a (an) before a noun in the singular or no article at all
for a noun in the plural indicate non-specificity: A teacher/Teachers can
kick you out of class. By contrast, the word the before both
singular and plural nouns indicates specific examples: the teachers [at our
school] are on strike. To complicate matters, abstract nouns do not require
articles: Charity is the backbone of religion, with both charity
and religion singular and without an article. In contrast, English nouns
do not have gender, allowing English to have single comprehensive articles,
specifically the and a, with an being used for pronunciation
reasons, i.e., before a vowel sound, not a vowel as many students think. See a
human vs an hour and a unicorn vs an umbrella.
Finally, in phrases, English allows the omission of articles after the first
noun, e.g., I brought the bread, butter and jam, with it being
understood that the word the also applies to butter and jam.
Most native English speaker intuitively understand these rules but not necessarily all
ESL students.
French has the same articles but the distinction is less clear, adds gender and number considerations and
requires that all nouns have articles. The direct equivalent of the English
articles are un/une and le/la/les/l’. In
practice, their use is different from English. First, while the difference
between un gateau and le gateau is clear, note the sentence la
charitė est la colonne
vertébrale de la religion uses the definite article, i.e., la, as
compared to non-use of articles in English for the same sentence. Since French
nouns, similar to most European languages, have a gender, the form of the
article is adjusted for masculine, feminine and even plural: le gateau, la
pâtisserie and les desserts. The l’ is used before
vowel sounds, including before silent h’s, e.g., la hollondaise and
l’angoise. The most common mistake of English speakers in French is to fail
add the article to all nouns in a list, e.g., J’ai apporté le pain, le beurre, et la confiture. The different approach to articles in abstract
nouns and lists is often noticeable in learners.
Hebrew only has half the article package, sometimes buries it but often
is more than generous with its use. Specifically, Hebrew has a particle for a
specific noun, the letter hehה ,
which it attaches to the relevant noun, e.g., חתול [hatul], a cat
as compared to החתול [hehatul], the cat. In other words, the
absence of the letter heh means that the noun is non-specific. The
ambiguity is when a prepositional particle such as ב [bə], in, or ל [lə], to, is also added because the prepositional particle
may include the article. Without full vowel markings,
בקופסה [bekufsa] could mean in a box or in
the box. Not only that, in compound nouns, Hebrew adds the article to the
second noun only. For example, compare בית ספר [beit safer], literally house of a book, a school, to בית הספר [beit hasafer], the school. By contrast, the definitive
articles is added to all adjectives describing said noun. Compare חתול שחור [hatul shahor], a black cat, with החתול השחור [hehatul hashahor], the black cat. The result of this
binary approach to the difference between definite and indefinite articles is
that Israelis often make errors in applying them in English, particularly the
word a.
As is typical in the Russian language, it went down a different route
and simply has no articles, definite or indefinite. Instead, Russian indicates
the specificity of the noun through noun case, word order or adding words. To
quote Wikipedia: “The use of a direct object in the genitive instead of the
accusative in negation signifies that the noun is indefinite, compare: Я
не вижу книги [ya ne viju knigi]("I don't see a book" or "I
don't see any books") and Я не вижу книгу [ya ne viju knigu] ("I
don't see the book").” (Sorry for the quote but the writer did such a good
job.). As for word order, again from Wikipedia: “compare В комнату вбежал
мальчик [b’komnatu vebyejal malchik] ("Into the room rushed a
boy") and Мальчик вбежал в комнату [malchik vebyejal b’komatyu] ("The
boy rushed into the room").” Finally, the addition of words such as какой-нибудь
[kakoe nibud] or Любые [lubiye], which can be translated as any, makes
it clear that no specific object is intended. The results of this syntactic
approach is the most Russians have no clear idea of how to use the and a
in English.
All roads to Rome, they say. So, as long as the text transmits the
intention of the writer, everything is kosher. At the same time, it is
fascinating to see how languages approach the subtle matter of definitive and
non-definitive articles. Not only does it show the variety of approaches human languages
take but, on a practical level, it sometimes allows the reader to identify the
native language of the writer.
* Picture captions allows the blind to fully access the Internet.
