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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. nlitened · · focus · HN ↗
      You probably mean word genders? So you probably say it's sometimes difficult to derive the gender of a noun, hence the correct article
      1. andoando · · focus · HN ↗
        Genders in language is seemingly such a needlessly pointless concept I am really confused as to how it ever developed.

        I still feel Armenian is such a great Indo European language. No articles, no genders, completely phonetic, consistent verb endings, no particular word ordering

        1. thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
          There's an active gender distinction in English between people (using the relativizer who) and everything else (using the relativizer which).

          It is an area of current dispute whether the pronoun it can be applied to people or not.

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