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." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
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?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
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.
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".
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.
hbn · · focus · HN ↗
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
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?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
thayne · · focus · HN ↗
1-more · · focus · HN ↗
arlcode · · focus · HN ↗
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 · · focus · HN ↗