# no definite/indefinite article?



## Bienvenidos

Hello,

 I'm wondering which languages do not have definite/indefinite articles. I know Farsi doesn't have any, and, please correct me if I'm wrong, Polish.

*Example: Farsi generally has no definite articles*

You can't say a book in Farsi. You can say *yug kitob, *but that means "one book". You can't say the book either. You can say *u kitob, *but that means "that book". Sometimes "a" or "the" can be implied when saying something, *kulum dari? *do you have a pen", or _*túsha dari* _do you have the marker. I suppose that the addition of the -a at the end of the noun can signify "the", but again, there are no specific definite/indefinite articles. 



Thank you.
*Bienvenidos*


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## Pivra

Thai, Sanskrit, Latin


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## jorge_val_ribera

Japanese doesn't have definite or indefinite articles.


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## lazarus1907

Chinese doesn't have articles, but like Japanese, it has some words that roughly can work as indefinite articles sometimes


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## elroy

Arabic has a definite article but no indefinite article.


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## amikama

elroy said:
			
		

> Arabic has a definite article but no indefinite article.


Same in Hebrew.


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## ronanpoirier

I guess Russian has no articles too...


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## optimistique

Icelandic doesn't have any articles either.


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## Whodunit

ronanpoirier said:
			
		

> I guess Russian has no articles too...


 
Nor does Czech. I'm not sure, but I think all the Slavic languages do not have definite/indefinite articles.


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## jester.

Bulgarian and Macedonian do have articles, as they are part of the "Balkan linguistic union".
One feature of this union are the articles which go behind the noun. Like also for example in Romanian.


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## Flaminius

Slavic languages excepting Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Latvian and Lithuanian.
Japanese.
Chinese.
Vietnamese.
Tamil.
Korean.


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## Pivra

classical Greek???? i'm not sure of this
Pali (medieval sanskrit)


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## Josh_

elroy said:
			
		

> Arabic has a definite article but no indefinite article.


Actually, that's debatable. You could say that in colloquial Arabic there is no indefinite article, but in Modern Standard the indefinite form of a noun is marked by the affixation '-n' (the tanwiin) at the end of the word -- remember the articles do not have to be separate entities and/or come before the word. I believe many languages with cases systems work that way.

Aramaic also does not use cases.  The definiteness or indefiteness of a word is inferred from the context.

From some of the posts in this thread, I seem to see a correlation between ancient languages and no articles.  One could infer that articles came into languages later (for whatever reason).


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## elroy

Josh Adkins said:
			
		

> Actually, that's debatable. You could say that in colloquial Arabic there is no indefinite article, but in Modern Standard the indefinite form of a noun is marked by the affixation '-n' (the tanwiin) at the end of the word -- remember the articles do not have to be separate entities and/or come before the word. I believe many languages with cases systems work that way.


 
But that affixation is used to mark other things too, proper nouns for instance.  I wouldn't consider it an indefinite article.  It marks some nouns that are indefinite, but they're already indefinite.  In other words, it's not the "tanwiin" that makes them indefinite; whereas it _is_ the "al-" that makes a noun definite.  The "tanwiin" is just a grammatical marker; it's the effect and not the cause, if you will.


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## Josh_

elroy said:
			
		

> But that affixation is used to mark other things too, proper nouns for instance. I wouldn't consider it an indefinite article. It marks some nouns that are indefinite, but they're already indefinite. In other words, it's not the "tanwiin" that makes them indefinite; whereas it _is_ the "al-" that makes a noun definite. The "tanwiin" is just a grammatical marker; it's the effect and not the cause, if you will.


Like I said, it is debatable, nothing set in stone.  I have a grammar book that actually says that the indefinite marker tanwiin.  Yes, there are other functions of the tanwiin, but all words in isolation, without the definite article, are marked with tanwiin, right?  One could safely say that that is the indefinite marker.


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## elroy

Josh Adkins said:
			
		

> Like I said, it is debatable, nothing set in stone. I have a grammar book that actually says that the indefinite marker tanwiin. Yes, there are other functions of the tanwiin, but all words in isolation, without the definite article, are marked with tanwiin, right? One could safely say that that is the indefinite marker.


 
Exactly - it's a _marker_, just like a "Damma" marks a singular "faa3el" and a "sukuun" marks a singular imperative.

I understand the argument, but it doesn't convince me that Arabic actually has an indefinite article. 

"Al-" has one and only one function; it makes nouns definite; therefore it is a definite article.  A "tanwiin" is an inflection that serves a variety of purposes, one of which happens to be to mark indefinite nouns (which do not become indefinite by virtue of receiving the "tanwiin.")

It may be debatable, but I don't buy it.


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## Josh_

Article, marker -- what's the difference (in this context)?

A closer reading of that page in the grammar book it does say that the definite marker is a word (which can only be attached to nouns and adjectives) and the indefinite marker is just an affixation.

But (me speaking) if the definite marker can only be attached to the word, isn't just an affixation also? But I know the difference and I know what you mean. Alas, there's no point arguing about it.


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## elroy

The difference (in this context) is that the "tanwiin" doesn't _make_ the word indefinite; it merely signals that it is (sort of, since some other types of words can get it too) whereas the "al-" _makes_ the word definite. It's more than just a "marker."

I know you said you knew that I meant; I just posted the above for the sake of thoroughness.


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## optimistique

Pivra said:
			
		

> classical Greek???? i'm not sure of this



Classical greek had a definite article, but no indefinite.


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## laurika

as said, also Slovak language has no definite/indefinite article


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## Whodunit

Turkish is another language belonging to this list. It doesn't have articles either.


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## Elieri

optimistique said:
			
		

> Icelandic doesn't have any articles either.



Is that true? I thought that Icelandic, sharing the same roots as the other north germanic languages, would have a definite article?


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## maxl

And Latin too does not have either.


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## Whodunit

Elieri said:
			
		

> Is that true? I thought that Icelandic, sharing the same roots as the other north germanic languages, would have a definite article?


 
Icelandic has a definite article, but no indefinite article. 

And you're right that it works like other North German languages: Nouns and the definite article are agglutinated, i.e. that the article just follows its noun.


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## macta123

In Hindi:

Kitaab = Book

       Ek kitaab (One book) ;  Koi Kitab (Any book) ; Bahut kitaben (Many Books)

       Yah kitaab (This book ) ; Woh Kitaab (That book)


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## Pivra

macta123 said:
			
		

> In Hindi:
> 
> Kitaab = Book
> 
> Ek kitaab (One book) ; Koi Kitab (Any book) ; Bahut kitaben (Many Books)
> 
> Yah kitaab (This book ) ; Woh Kitaab (That book)


 
The Hindi word for book is from a Persian root?? Kitab. Surprised, I thought we all use Sanskrit rooted word for book.[[we as in Indic languages]]


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## ger4

I'll add two closely related languages: Finnish and Estonian.


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## 涼宮

Indonesian, Cantonese, Greenlandic, Swahili, Xhosa and likely many Bantu languages follow the same logic.



Flaminius said:


> Vietnamese.



Vietnamese actually has articles, sorta, which I found surprising. It doesn't seem to be a hardcore rule but _the_ can be translated as _này,__ kia, những _or_ các _depending on the context_, _while a/an can be_ một_. They aren't used the exact same way as the English the/a/an, nor are they used all the time but they do work as articles.


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## Ghabi

^Definite nouns need to be marked in Cantonese. The job is done by the "measure words". For example, for "the dog has died" one has to say,

*zek3gau2 sei2zo2 
measure word-dog die-perfective particle*

This is an aspect that often throws Mandarin speakers off guard.


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## 涼宮

Ah, thanks, Ghabi! Damn counters! Indeed, it threw me off guard .


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## apmoy70

Greek (Classical and Modern) has definite article but not indefinite, the latter is the numeral one and has only singular: 
ClGr=> *«Εἷς ἄνθρωπος» heîs ắntʰrōpŏs *--> _a man_ (lit. _one man_)
MoGr=> *«Ένας άνθρωπος»*[ˈenas ˈanθropos] --> _a man _(lit. _one man_)

However the indefinite article is not used as often as in other languages:
ClGr=> *«Οὗτός ἐστι ἀνήρ ἄξιος» hoûtós ĕsti ānér ắksīŏs* --> _he is a brave man_ (lit. _he is brave man_)
MoGr=> *«Είναι φαρμακοποιός»* [ˈine farmakopiˈos] --> _s/he is a pharmacist_ (lit. _s/he is pharmacist_)


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