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."
There’s an ongoing debate about whether articles are a proper part of speech; the only articles in English are the and a. Some grammarians prefer “determiner”, which includes a, the, some, other, no (as in “no man”) etc. A determiner is just a word that selects/determines an element of a larger assumed universe of discourse.
Some grammarians deny the existence of determiners, as they are not found in traditional grammars of the language, with the words now considered determiners placed in other parts of speech.
The really common "determiners" are this, that, and possessive forms such as their and your.
People often call those last words (your, his) "possessive pronouns", which always confused me because they are obviously not nouns. They are actually "possessive determiners", which is quite logical. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, etc.
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."
d-us-vb · · focus · HN ↗
Some grammarians deny the existence of determiners, as they are not found in traditional grammars of the language, with the words now considered determiners placed in other parts of speech.
bluebarbet · · focus · HN ↗
The really common "determiners" are this, that, and possessive forms such as their and your.
People often call those last words (your, his) "possessive pronouns", which always confused me because they are obviously not nouns. They are actually "possessive determiners", which is quite logical. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, etc.
IAmBroom · · focus · HN ↗
bluebarbet · · focus · HN ↗