> As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table"

This was a common sentiment I heard from Russian students when teaching them English. The concept of articles is absolutely maddening, I think, when your native language does not have it.

I recall trying to teach it with a simple explanation. “I heard a dog walking outside. The dog pushed the door open and entered.” By switching from “a dog” to “the dog”, I expressed that the dog I heard was the same dog that entered. We translated the same sentences into Russian and they expressed that it was natural to assume, without the articles it was the same dog. I then asked them “but what if was a different dog that entered?” and they indicated the speaker would likely add a clarifying clause to the statement to ensure that there are two different dogs in scope.

It caused me to ponder and I came to the realization that some of these elements of language while seemingly “useless” (meaning, you could clearly make a language work without them) are what add subtle richness to a language. Just as I can do without a ternary in JavaScript, I enjoy its succinctness even if it might be a bit confusing for a new learner.

I recall comparing some of my own difficulties learning Russian as a native English speaker. My head literally exploded when I realized for every verb I had to learn a perfective and imperfective aspects. Something simple like “I did it.” What on earth is the difference between the two aspects, I often asked. To Russians it was clear - it addeded subtle richness.

I guess what I learned is that in language “not needed” does not mean “useless”. I learned to love the richness of the Russian language and began to better appreciate some of richness of my own language that I previously took for granted.

> “I heard a dog walking outside. The dog pushed the door open and entered.”

"THE door"? Which door? Why is "the" there? Seems as yet another case of "tautological article", as the answer is "that exact door that was opened by the dog", so why not just write "[The] dog pushed door open and entered."? No extra information is conveyed by "the".

Of course it's maddening since no explanation makes full sense.

> I then asked them “but what if was a different dog that entered?”

Indeed, what would you say in English if it were a different dog? "I heard a dog walking outside. [Another] dog pushed the door open end entered."

Writing the second sentence as "A dog pushed the door.." if there were another makes absolutely no sense to me (because: which dog? -- another one or the same one?), so when writing "Dog pushed door.." it's very natural to assume that it's the same dog.

> What on earth is the difference between the two aspects, I often asked. To Russians it was clear - it addeded subtle richness.

Ah, but aspect is more than just subtle richness: it's a tool that it makes it possible to succinctly express complex temporal relationships.

I’m curious your native language so I can better understand your perspective. Articles convey meaning to me - relatively, perhaps, or specificity. How to use “a” vs. “the” is not taught in schools to native speakers of English. It’s not something that is prescribed by rules. A speaker selects “a” or “the” by what they are trying to convey and a native speaker does not ever question when he should use one or their other based on grammar or rules. Instead, he chooses based on what he is trying to express.

I wonder how the native language you learn as a child impacts the way your brain not only expresses concepts but how it even perceives them.

If I walked up to a my friend, a native speaker of English and said “I like dogs” he’d probably respond with “that’s nice”. If I walked up and said “I like the dogs” he’d probably ask “which dogs?” because the use of “the” conveys that it is a specific group of dogs. In a language without articles you might use “I like those dogs” or “I like these dogs” to call out specificity among dogs in general. That’s great. There’s lots of different ways to express the same concept in virtually all languages. Redundancy in expression doesn’t remove meaning from any method.

My whole point was there is no requirement for articles, many languages work without articles, but just because they don’t convey meaning to you doesn’t mean they don’t convey meaning to someone else. They add specificity and relatively that is subtle yet important within the language, even if it could be accomplished by other means.

I heard another example last night when watching sport news and am curious your thoughts. The announcer said:

“This is not the story of the night but it definitely is a story.” If I drop the articles, it seems I have to re-word that sentence to convey what is being expressed.

I'm not disputing that articles are sometimes useful, indeed sometimes you need "the" or "that" for disambiguation. But in most cases it's [a?] noise that I can't make sense of as in your previous example.

[I seriously cannot decide whether "it's noise" or "it's a noise" is correct in the previous sentence because it makes sense to put "some" in front but putting "a" "feels" wrong.]

> "The dog opened the door and entered."

Why "THE" door? It's not been previously introduced and it refers to the very door being opened by the dog. SUCH use of articles is confusing and nonsensical when set against all of the examples where "the" _does_ make a difference.

Similar examples: "I'm on the phone", "I'm in the shower", "The food is in the fridge", etc. By the same "rule" that requires "the" in these examples, you should be supposed to say "I'm at the home", which is for some reason wrong.

Next, should one use "the" / "a" or nothing here: "I'm at the post office." [Which one? There are tens if not hundreds in a large city.]

I've learned those and many others as expressions by heart, but use of "the" is a mystery to me.

As for "a", I have two simple rules: nouns (usually) cannot stand naked, and "a" is appropriate if "some" would be appropriate as well.

Or, if I imagine a teacher saying: "Today, we're going to learn about the animals that ruled the Earth 100 million years ago."

Why "the" animals? Why did I put it there in the first place? Because if I read the sentence silently, it feels "wrong" without an article before "animals", yet I cannot put "a" since it's in plural.

Or, even more amusingly: why "THE Earth"? We only have one.

Or, contrast with: "that ruled planet Earth 100 million years ago". No "THE planet Earth". Why? Or is it correct to say "THE planet Earth"? I seriously have no idea.

> “This is not the story of the night but it definitely is a story.” If I drop the articles, it seems I have to re-word that sentence to convey what is being expressed.

If you drop articles, it'd be ambiguous in English because it could be interpreted as "This is not (story of night) [i.e., story _about_ night] but it definitely is story."

The ambiguity in Croatian is resolved by declension; "night" would be in genitive case which seems to be the role of "the" in that sentence.

"A" in "a story" doesn't seem to have any purpose (to me).

EDIT: So, that's my perspective. I can't describe it in a better way than listing examples where "THE"/"A" is somehow required (or, worse, it must NOT be there), yet the use doesn't have anything to do with "specificity".

As an amusing anecdote: A couple of years ago I attended a course on scientific writing in English and we had to write an essay. The teacher returned the essay to me, it was full of red ink, and the vast majority of the errors (like >80%) were wrong use of articles (missing or wrong).

EDIT2: As for my native language (Croatian), definiteness is mostly implied. When you feel that specificity is needed because there are multiple potential subjects/objects, you use "THAT/THIS". For example, say you were at an animal shelter and you wanted to take some animal home. If there only were one dog among the animals, and you liked that dog of all animals, you'd say "I like dog, I'll take it home." If there were multiple dogs, you'd point and say "I like THAT dog, I'll take it home."

As an addition to the shelter example: if there were many dogs, and there were only one white dog, you would say "I'll take white dog." And so on...

I would add that so many tenses in other languages also feel excessive (there are only three in Russian). And so does using the verb "to be" for the present tense: in Russian it's enough to say "I developer". This and the wide range of diminutives are the best parts of the Russian grammar, everything else is overly complex.

> I came to the realization that some of these elements of language while seemingly “useless” (meaning, you could clearly make a language work without them) are what add subtle richness to a language.

That’s a great way of putting it.

For me, "the" and "a" are critical for understanding whether you are introducing something new or assuming that I know what you are talking about from context. If I use "the" then it's something clear from context, if I use "a" it's something new. The languages I know make a big fuss about this so I'm curious how you can figure out from context whether you can figure out something from context.

> I'm curious how you can figure out from context whether you can figure out something from context.

Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not.

Take a hypothetical phone conversation, an example that nobody has managed to explain to me satisfactorily: A: "Where are you?" B: "I'm in [the/a/(nothing)] shower."

People tell me that "the" is the correct thing to use. But A is none the wiser; B could be at home, in a gym, at work... A is none the wiser about _which_ shower B is in and the shower has not been introduced previously in the conversation. It's tautological "the", B is in that shower that he's currently using, so he could just as well say "I'm in shower".

Or, similarly: A: "Where's my food?" B: "I've put it in fridge." If A is at work, he'd go looking into fridge at office. If at home, he'd go look into fridge in kitchen. If there are two fridges nearby, he'd ask "Which one?"

Even though I deliberately omitted "the/a" in the previous paragraph, I don't think you got confused about _which_ office or _which_ kitchen fridge A would go looking in. And personally I cannot imagine that A, upon hearing "it's in fridge" while being in the office, would go home and look into the fridge at home. Or that he'd even have to ask "which fridge?" if there only were one at office.

So there's an attempted answer.

EDIT: one of my rules of thumb is: if I can put "some" in front of a noun without changing the meaning, then it's most probably appropriate to use "a".

> Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not.

This doesn't work in English, because both speakers are not assumed to have the same knowledge of context. The "the"/"a" distinguishes between something that describes and something that also determines.

Alice: Did you see any of those movies?

Bob: I saw the good one.

In this sentence, Bob is saying that "good one" can be figured out from context. In other words, Bob is saying that there is only one good movie in "those movies". Alice may or may not be aware of this from context, but she has learned that Bob thinks that there is only one good movie in "those movies".

Bob: I saw a good one.

In this sentence, Bob is saying that "good one" describes the movie he saw, but he is not saying that this determines which one he saw. He is not making claims about context.

This is an example where it plays a role. In Slavic languages, you would say something like “I saw that good one” (inserting a definitive article substitute) or “the one I saw was good”; in English, you don’t need the latter phrasing with “a”; indeed, it is somewhat artificial example.

What the parent post was saying was well described by his examples of where the article is obviously superfluous and doesn’t provide contextual information - which is the majority of their uses. There are situations where articles carry information (nobody disputes that I think), but they are used far more frequently as grammatical filler.

Ha, there's a difference between

“I saw that good one” -- translated to Croatian, this wording strongly implies that both knew upfront which movie was good and he watched only that one. But according to the parent's explanation it may not be the case, Alice has only learned that one of the movies was good.

and

"The one I saw was good" (he picked a random movie from the collection and it happened to be good -- which would be "a good one" from the parent's example).

Ah, finally an example where "the" does convey some extra information. However,

> Bob: I saw the good one.

Weird. Before I read your explanation I interpreted this as Alice and Bob having a prior mutual understanding about which of the movies was good and Alice immediately knows the particular movie he saw. Also, she knows that he decided upfront to watch (only) that movie.

EDIT: last point, if they don't have a prior understanding about which movie is "good", Bob would have to have watched _all_ of them to be able to say "THE good one". (Because, if he only watched a subset, an unwatched movie could be better than those he watched and would make him change his mind about which one is "good").

> she has learned that Bob thinks that there is only one good movie in "those movies".

According to your explanation, she still doesn't know _which_ movie he saw. She knows that only one was good and that it was the movie he saw. But then you could just say "I watched good one".

> "I saw a good one"

.. here, he picked a movie at random and it happened to be good. Yay, "a" does make a difference! :)

> It's tautological "the"

It's the (sorry) obligatory "the", because "the shower" has been lexicalized. This is very intimate, because the situation in which one talks about the shower, especially when still learning the language, will virtually always be at home with family. But enough talk. I will go to bed ... to bed myself. First I will go to the shower, an' shower, though. It's overall very unlikely I will have an in-shower phone call.

The given explanation is not satisfying. There's a difference between rhetorics and grammar. The common denominator is syntax (phonology, too, to a degree) but it differs between vocal and written speech. The semantics are the same, but you can take a look at the wiktionary page of [a] to get an idea of how diverse that is.

[a] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a

>Erm, memory? You remember whether something has been introduced or not.

Not a very reliable tool. At least "bring THE table" introduces some error correction in the sentence.

- "Come by the shop tomorrow. And bring THE table".

(confused by the explicit "THE", the error correction kicks in:)

- "Huh? What table?"

- "The one we talked about last week on the phone",

- "A, yes!"

> Not a very reliable tool.

Exactly. Alternatively (note the missing "THE")

> "Come by the shop tomorrow. And bring table"

then, confused by seemingly nonsensical request of bringing some table along [why "some" -- because he doesn't remember the earlier conversation]: "Huh? Why, what table?"

As rytis pointed out, if the "sender" wants to emphasize the context, he'd say "And bring THAT table."

On the other hand, if the sender and receiver are thinking of a particular, but _different_ table, neither "table", nor "THE table", nor "THAT table" helps. (E.g., the receiver has one table that needs painting and one that needs to have its leg replaced, where "the" for the sender is the first and for the receiver the second table.)

A rule I heard was about abstract nouns requiring the article. It is not a strict rule, it seems, and what is abstract or not could be a matter of debate. In line with the OP notion something abstract would be exactly something that was not known. So here, the whole scenario is "the table". It's not any old table. In the speakers mind it is the sole reason of the listeners existence.

"hello, table?"

"Yes, this is table speaking"

"Is it still there?"

"Yes, it is here?"

"good good. bring it, table!"

It seems almost as if "it" and "the", highly underspecific terms are way more complicated in nature and thus have to repeated often to remind us ... just as much as egoists tend to speak a lot of "I", which I tend to avoid when I write my own texts because I do know who I am talking to. That is, "come" is usually preceded by "you", to address the recipient. "you come" is a full sentence. It's regularly binding "here", but if "here" needs to be specified, the verb is "come by". The object is a new phrase, and to set that off with the appropriate contrast, we simply use an article. Otherwise, "come to shop" would appear like a compound verb. Indeed, "come to town" is idiomatic, and that's lexicalized as a compound word (collocation) as seen in "homecoming". While "bring" is usually bound to "me" (or here, eventually, as the difference is minimal). It wouldn't be "table bringing". You don't address the table itself to bring itself. The table doesn't belong to the noun, the subject of the verb - not anymore. The status of the table is kind of unclear and that's the whole point. It already changed ownership as it seems, but didn't change hands yet. The "the" then is a placeholder for a qualifier. It is the most simple place holder next "a" or nothing. It should change to "my", and since we also have "(to) me" in scope, that would actually be very apt. "Bring my table". Is that one also objectionable? Diplomatically, you'd say "your table". The article is used to show that' you want to be specific, but not too specific yet. In essence, it changes only changes the scope. If it didn't and if it was clear that you have (are) the table, then it would be enough to say "you bring!" And people really do or did talk like that. "I'm hungry, cook!" "Answer! I wanna have an answer. You answer" "guard, guard!". etc. etc.

I'm just making that up. Never mind.

Then why not use 'THAT' and 'ANY' instead?

Also, in your example, what is the purpose of referencing particular phone with 'THE'? Why not just 'on phone'?

NB. Just like zvrba I was (still am) having troubles with As and THEs. Baltic language speaker here btw.

>Then why not use 'THAT' and 'ANY' instead?

For variety. Why not just wear black everyday?

Linguistically, articles are the exception rather than the rule. Grammatical words are always derived from concrete words and 'the' is just a degeneration of 'that'.

I am fascinated by how little syntax is required to actually communicate with each other. You can remove gender from language entirely and still understand what people mean. We can even get rid of time-based tenses and instead say something like "I go to the store yesterday". This is incorrect English, but the point is still communicated. As you say "the" and "a" could be condensed. You could go even further and combine these words with "one". Having traveled to a lot of places where I had to speak languages that I don't speak or understand, the amount of language built on top of the tiny "required" subset is marvelous and interesting.

Other questions that make language fun. Any ideas where eenie meanie miney moe comes from? Why does flat (low) German exist, and how far is it from Dutch (or English)? How many dialects of various languages are spoken in the Alps? Why do we call different Chinese dialects "dialects" and not "languages"? Which language has the most diverse set of conjugation rules? But I digress.

I think all this unnecessary 'clutter' serves as error correction when spoken.

Even if you don't fully understand a word, you can piece together from the context what was said.

That's a common sophism that completely ignores the cost/benefit trade-off of those supposedly useful error correction mechanisms.

In German for example, they're IMO total overkill (as in cost far outweighs benefit).

But then, you have to take into account that over-engineering things is a national hobby in Germany.

The question becomes chicken-and-egg: did the language induce the cultural trait or did the cultural trait structure the language.

> Why does flat (low) German exist, and how far is it from Dutch (or English)?

I'm not a linguist by any means but as I understand it's a separate language with its' own dialects. Lower saxon nowadays might have a gradual dialect continuum in the West into the Netherlands but in a days of Hanse it was a widespread language around the Baltic sea and had a huge influence on other languages and cultures. Even today part of it's dialects are closer to Swedish than high German (specially Pommern which was part of Sweden for quite some time).

>As a native speaker of Slavic language, I've never understood the need for differentiating between "THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant (note that both are different from "THIS/THAT table", which I do NOT deem useless.)

One differentiating example could be:

One person says to another:

1) Put it on the table.

vs. saying:

2) Put it on a table.

(Where, in both cases, by "it", they mean some object, say a book or any other thing).

1) would imply there is only one table in the room, so "the" was used.

2) would imply there is more than one table in the room, so "a" was used, meaning put it on any table you wish, it doesn't matter which one.

I'm a German learning czech and have the opposite problem: the czech (and probably other slavic languages) still have those articles but mostly leave them away. I'm never really sure, when you still need to use them:

* ten/ta/to = der/die/das (the)

* nějaký/nějaká/nějaké = (irgend-)ein/eine/ein (a, some)

In my course there's the example “nějaká paní se ptá na cestu" (A woman asks for the way). Not sure what is different if the nějaká is left out.

These examples map to English well:

* ten/ta/to = that, not “the”; I.e. literally or figuratively pointing (including e.g. referencing previously mentioned object and not wanting to repeat it)

* nějaký etc. - some, not “a”, i.e. explicitly strongly expressing vagueness. “A” in English is automatic grammar construct, “some” is explicitly expressing uncertainess. That sentence would correctly be translated as “SOME woman asks for directions” - I.e. a woman you don’t know, some rando that walked in the shop for example. A more real sentence: “some woman is asking for you” (you don’t know her, never seen her, she just walked in and asked for your colleguae), “nějaká paní se po tobě ptá”. You would use “a” in English here, it warrants clarifying the situation with “some” - and in Czech, that’s the only situation when you need these, when you are pointing to/referencing something or expressing vagueness.

Ah, thanks, I think I got it now. One problem for me was, that German der/die/das can actually translate to both, “the“ and “that“ depending on the emphasis.

My native language is Croatian, but...

> ten/ta/to

are you sure it's not "that" (dies(e,es,er)) instead of "the"?

> Not sure what is different if the nějaká is left out.

I'd interpret it as "The woman asks for the way.", i.e., a particular person is contextually implied. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

EDIT: alternately, it describes an abstract event of woman asking for directions. Putting it as "paní se ptá na cestu" would make perfect sense in, say, a movie script.

Say a friend observed you from the other side of the street talking with her, approached you and asked what was that about.

You could say "[nějaká] paní se ptá na cestu" both with and without "nějaká". WITH "nějaká" you'd be emphasizing it was a random woman. WITHOUT "nějaká" it'd be that particular woman he saw you talking with. though, I'd use "she" for describing the event, i.e., "she asked for the way".

Makes sense - still it feels odd, coming from the “other side“. I wonder when this split happened.

About dieser/diese/dieses, that would be tento/tato/toto (this/that here).

Articles usually appear in the languages which (are starting to) lose inflection. Say, there is a Slavic language which had lost its cases and does have the articles now - Bulgarian

It's all a kind of ouroboros of languages - if something gets simplified, something else appears there

>"THE table" and "A table". It's useless and clear from the context what is meant

"Bring the table", "Bring a table".

Do I ask you to bring some table we've already talked about or I can expect you to remember the reference to,

or do I ask you to bring any table because any table will do?

"Clear from the context" is a low bar. In languages, as in parsers, we should avoid it if we can.

Careful what you wish for. Many languages are much more specific than English, but you don't think that English has a problem there, do you?

For example, why not introduce gendered nouns - they often help to clarify references? "The door and the window are open." - "Well, close es (=das window)" vs "Well, close sie (=die door)".

Other languages indicate evidentiality (that is, how a speaker learned about something) by a verb suffix, eg Eastern Pomo:

* -ink’e (nonvisual sensory), * -ine (inferential), * -·le (hearsay), * -ya (direct knowledge)

Now, I might say, in English that is clear from context, or expressed in some other way, but according to you, "we should avoid it if we can". Thus, better learn Eastern Pomo?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

>Careful what you wish for. Many languages are much more specific than English, but you don't think that English has a problem there, do you?

I might do. But I don't wish to add my static preconceptions upon an evolutionary evolving thing like language and its linguistic community.

That said, I speak a language with gendered nouns, and they're fine.

Grammar articles ("a" and "the") often times function as a type of glue for your words so that sentences can keep a certain pace, they also provide a lot of meaningful information on how sure you are about the thing that you are talking about.