Grammar Explanation

Articles actually modify nouns and are in reality a special kind of adjective. However, as they are so frequently used, they have their own name.

There are only 3 articles in English:

• ‘a’ and ‘an’ (indefinite articles)
• ‘the’ (the definite article)

The (The Definite Article)

“The” is known as the ‘definite article’ because it refers to something definite – which means something specific. It can be used in a few different ways:

1 To refer to something that there is only one of:

• There are a lot of birds in the sky day -> There is only one sky, so ‘the’ is used to refer to it. Because there is only one sky in the world, it is unique. Other examples of unique things include the sun, the moon, the world, and the universe.
• Joseph picked up the cup from the table -> Because we are referring to ‘the cup’, there can only be one of them. There are can also be one table, as it is referred to as ‘the table’. If there were many cups on the table, the sentence would say “Joseph picked up a cup from the table”.

2 To refer to something that has already been mentioned:

• Alexander is going to study at a university in Scotland. The university is in Edinburgh -> In the first sentence, we mentioned ‘a university’ because there is more than one of them in Scotland. But in the second sentence, we are now talking about a specific university (the one Alexander is going to study at), so we refer to it as ‘the university’. 
• Sofia and Susan are watching a movie. The movie is about animals -> In the first sentence, we are told they are watching ‘a movie’, because there are lots of movies! In the second sentence we have already mentioned a movie (the one Sofia and Susan are watching), so we are talking about a specific movie and can use ‘the’.

A and An (Indefinite Articles)

“A” and “An” are called indefinite articles because they do not refer to a specific, or definite, thing:

• Joseph picked up a cup from the table -> This is a slightly different version of the sentence above, as Joseph picked up a cup. This means there must be more than one cup on the table.
• Alexander is going to study at a university in Scotland. The university is in Edinburgh -> Again, looking at a sentence from above, we use a to refer to something the first time we mention it.

The difference between a and an is that an is used to refer to nouns that begin with the letters (a, e, i, o, and u), which are known as vowels. A is used with the other letters, which are known as consonants:

• Albert went to the shop to buy an ice cream -> Ice cream starts with ‘I’ so we use ‘an’.
• Norma gave the horse a carrot -> Carrot begins with ‘c’ so we use ‘a’ (note ‘the horse’ – which tells us we are talking about a specific horse or that there is only one horse)

There are also a couple of special exceptions when deciding whether to use a or an.

The first is with words that begin with a silent ‘h’:

• I will be there in an hour -> The ‘h’ is silent so the word sounds like ‘our’. Because of this, we use ‘an’.

The other exception to the normal rules is words that start with the letters ‘un’:

• Claudia wants to go to a university in Europe -> University starts with ‘un’, so we use ‘a’ – ‘an university’ just sounds strange!

Articles In Other Languages

Articles are an interesting grammatical feature because they vary considerably from language to language. Some languages (such as Russian) don’t use articles at all, for example! Other languages, such as Spanish and Italian, have masculine and feminine forms of their articles. And in German, the article changes its form based on the grammatical case that the sentence requires.