Articles in languages in and around Europe

by Porodicnostablo

23 comments
  1. I can get behind the English definite “the” and indefinite “a/an”, but the gendered article systems in some languages are quite insane.

  2. Articles are stupid and useless and suffix system is better in every way

  3. Armenian only has a suffixed definite article. The Wikipedia article you used as a source also confirms that.

  4. Lithuanian adjectives, pronouns and numbers have additional definite suffixes.

  5. I have proficiency certificate, and still don’t get the concept of them.

  6. German differentiates between definite and indefinite articles in its adjective endings.

    So “the green book” is “das grün**e** Buch” but “a green book” is “ein grün**es** Buch”.

    So the map isn’t 100% accurate, I guess. Pretty interesting though.

  7. I never understood these kind of language maps. It’s not like we don’t speak Finnish in Helsinki or they don’t speak Swedish north of Luleå.

  8. Mwhahaha Bulgarians (& Macedonians) & Albanians (& Kosovars) 😀

    I’m guessing their languages didn’t have the suffixed definite article but they got it from us after thousands of years of interaction 😁

  9. I’m going to keep it straight with you chief, all of southern Finland and Ostrobothnia do not speak swedish. All of northern Scandinavia doesn’t speak different Sami dialects.

  10. Moldova and Romania is apparently part of the Nordic countries now.

  11. I learned Arabic a bit and I remember it having both, but maybe it’s the standard Arabic only (Arabic has many dialects that can be very different, but the written standard is the same).

    # kalbun – a dog

    # al-kalbu – the dog

  12. Italian also has “partitive articles”, that’s what they’re called in Italian, which function basically as a plural form of the indefinite articles.

    Definite articles: la/l’, lo/l’, il

    Indefinite articles: una/un’, uno, un

    “Partitive articles”: dello/dell’, della/dell’, del, delle, degli, dei

  13. Don’t use a political map as a proxy for language usage or features.

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