ESL Blogs

I'm talking about the/a/an.

If, like me, you come from a language that does not have articles as such (my native language is Russian), then those pesky little articles they've got in English can give you one hell of a, well ..., hell. 

If you don't have articles in your own language it can really be hard to wrap your head around the very concept of articles, like what do they even need them for in English, anyway? Like why say 'a dog' or 'the dog' and not just 'dog'? 

Well to be honest I had less of a problem with the English articles personally because I learned English after German so I had already encountered articles in German and thus knew what the deal was, sort of. 

Anyway, I want to share a little algorithm, for lack of a better word, here with you all for how to decide which article to use and when. 

It's a quick and dirty set of steps for how to use articles with common nouns (as opposed to proper nouns or names), so here goes:

You basically ask yourself a series of questions like so:

1) Is this noun unique in this context? - if the answer is yes then just use 'the' and forgeddaboudid.

If the answer is no then the next thing we want to know is

2) Is this noun uncountable? - if the answer is yes  use 'nothing' or the so called 'zero article';

if the answer is no and you have a countable noun then

3) Is this countable noun plural? - if the answer is yes then use 'nothing' or 'zero article'

And if the answer is no, i.e. you've got a singular countable noun that's not unique in the given context then use 'a' or 'an' depending on whether the first sound in your noun ( or noun group) is a vowel or a consonant. 

Like I said it's a quick and dirty algorithm and it glosses over quite a few nuances. Like what does it mean for a noun to be 'unique' in the given context? Well, what I mean by this is that your noun answers the question which (one) as opposed to answering the question 'what is it?

Basically whenever you're naming something, that is whenever you're saying what something is you use the indefinite or 'classifying' article. Now here the nuance is that the 'visible' form of this article, i.e. a/an derived from the word for 'one' (1) and English has no indefinite/classifying article form for plural or uncountable nouns. You might say that when you're saying what something is and that something is plural or uncountable our 'classifying/indefinite' article becomes 'invisible'. It's sort of implied but it's not really there. 

And then when you are saying which thing you're talking about, when it's the only one (unique) in the given context you just use 'the' and you don't have to care about whether your noun is plural or singular, countable or uncountable. 

A very simple example:

What is this?  - > this is a table : you're saying what it is.

Is the table big? - > we both know which table I'm talking about, it's now 'unique' in this context.

Yes it is big, it is a big table - here, it's the same table we're talking about but I'm now renaming/reclassifying it, earlier I said it was a table, just a table, now I'm saying that the table is a big table.

Btw, note how this simple example sort of flies in the face of the disappointingly misguided 'rule' found in many a textbook that supposedly you use a/an when you mention something for the first time and after that you're supposed to say 'the' when talking about the same thing - that's total BS, as it depends on what you're trying to say. 

And last but not least, the countability vs uncountability of nouns. It's important to understand here that practically any noun in English can be either countable or uncountable depending on what you're trying to say. Like chicken, for example. Someone may have a pet chicken (countable), while someone else may have chicken for breakfast (meaning chicken meat - uncountable), or you can talk about how someone may technically be a man but he's still not man enough to face up to his father.