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English: A vs. An

365 points · 529 comments · azhenley

  1. deliciousturkey · · focus · HN ↗
    As a native speaker of a language without articles, I find the English article system by far the most intuitive and easiest to learn of all the languages I have studied. Most other Indo-European languages have articles that you simply need to memorize, as there is no way to derive them from the word itself. Which I never manage to do.
    1. smgpie · · focus · HN ↗
      As far as I know, articles of Ancient Greek adhere to roughly the same declension rules as nouns, with a little bit of irregular changes. And as for modern languages like Italian and French, their articles, while being irregular, are mostly inherited from Latin demonstratives ille, illa, illud, knowing this might help memorize the many forms.
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