Comment by hbn
11 hours ago
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."
In spanish you also have to use a/an:
Es un perro (its a dog)
Saying "es perro" makes no sense.
The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it.
Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male)
If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a":
Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
It’s simply that, in English, there is no indefinite plural article — or, equivalently, that the indefinite plural article is null. So ‘they are doctors’ is consistent with the behaviour of plural nouns elsewhere.
Contrast this with, for example, French, where the indefinite singular un(e) correspond to the indefinite plural des: La boulangerie vend des baguettes ‘the bakery sells baguettes’ (whereas English cannot say *‘a baguettes’). But as in Spanish, professions take no article either way: Il est médecin / Ils sont médecins. So all three languages are self-consistent, just in their own ways.
English still feels hard to explain when things sound natural and when they don't.
You can say "there are some vendors in the street" and it sounds normal. But if you were to say "they are some vendors" it sounds weird. It's pretty firmly more natural to say "they are vendors."
Oh, certainly, as is the case for any language!
In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, this is an insightful observation: you use ‘some <noun>’ specifically in order to say that there exists some set of things drawn from some larger set or in some configuration. You say ‘there are some vendors in the street’ because you’re drawing attention to their existence in the street (and indeed ‘there is/are’ is the prototypical English expression for existentials). You don’t say ‘they are some vendors’, because the use of ‘they’ implies some specific group of vendors already known to both speaker and listener — highlighting their existence again feels weird.
(Of course, this analysis is still incomplete. At some point you simply have to list all the specific ways in which ‘some’ is used — which, indeed, is exactly what Huddleston & Pullum do. Furthermore I’m certain that there is some discourse context in which ‘they are some vendors’ would be natural, even though I haven’t managed to think of one just yet.)
5 replies →
And “they are some vendors” usually actually means “they are excellent vendors”!
3 replies →
English would work for titles:
He is President.
He is Doctor. (Dr.)
"He is president" is different than "he is a president" (one among many) or "he is the president" (the one specific).
But it would have to be within the context of titles
With the specific case, the "the" could be dropped - "who is in running this rpg?" points "he is gamesmaster" which means "he is the gamesmaster".
Probably because it's a role, similar to the title?
You should not look at superficial similarities between languages, but at logic.
To the question: "What is he?", the answer can be "He is married, tall, doctor in medicine".
On another point of view, "He is a doctor" = "one in the set of the doctors". (But which one of the crowd there? The tall one is the doctor.)
"He is doctor in medicine": identity; "He is a doctor": aside property.
With different expressions, you are not expressing the same thing, but different ideas (some of them more preponderant in use in a territory).
I'm not sure why, but sentence feels forced and unnatural, and as a result a bit unconvincing. My intuition is to insert an "and" at the end of those three options and then it feels like you can't drop the "a", i.e. "married, tall, and a doctor in medicine". I mean, maybe you can but the sentence feels odd to me.
And the weird part is that you can put those three properties in any order, and you would not place an "a" in front of the other two.
Do you also feel «forced and unnatural»
"Il est médecin // il est un médecin // il est le médecin"? "Él es médico // él es un médico" // él es il médico"?
Are you feeling through memory or through logic? Why would it work in some languages but not other related ones?
What about "He is Commander, General, Loyal Servant, Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife"?
> you would not place an "a" in front
That is because 'tall' and 'married' are adjectives. So: "a tall fellow, a married man, and a doctor in medicine".
Similarities between languages is a much more intuitive approach for non-English speakers. This comment just explains an English idiom in terms of English idioms.
> Similarities between languages
If they are substantial instead of superficial.
> This comment just explains ... idiom in terms of
the logic behind it. Which is common to many languages.
Interstingly it is the same in german, you would say "Er ist Arzt" not "Er ist ein Arzt". Which makes me wonder why english uses an indefinite article there, since it doesn't seem to be either germanic or romantic in origin.
This was the root of the overblown Kennedy gaffe where he said “ich bin ein Berliner” instead of “ich bin berliner.”
The thing is that doesn't even sound wrong and I don't think any native speaker would object to the article when used with a place of origin/belonging in a speech.
It emphasizes the statement if you ask me.
Only many years after learning of the speech I read online that it's allegedly "a gaffe".
In this specific case the "ein" emphasizes/expresses that he "is one of us" to the Berliners. Not a gaffe at all, in my opinion.
To me, "Ich bin Berliner" sounds relatively neutral, or like a short statement. "Ich bin ein Berliner" sounds a bit less direct or a bit softer to me because you state that you are just one of the citizens of Berlin. But this may be just my feeling.
(In case you put the emphasis on "ein", you would clearly emphasize that you are just one of the many Berlin citizens.)
Eh, Italian has it tho.
"(Lui) è un dottore", "(Io) sono un dottore".
"Un" is the indefinite article.
Subject is usually dropped, thus the brackets
And actually, it is not so common to write the actual personal pronouns in Spanish, as they become more or less clear seeing the verb ending, due to conjugation of the verb. So one would probably say "Es médico.", when in context.
Certainly English can be odd. It can usually be understood through tough thorough thought though.
You are right most of the time for English, but today that should be "Arrr! He be the sawbones".
Spain had pirates too, but I don't speak Spanish so had to ask an LLM. It suggested that today in Spanish it would be "Él es el matasanos del barco". Any authentic Spanish pirates who can verify or correct that?
Not a pirate but a Spanish speaker.
Interestingly,
He's a doctor [in general] -> el es médico
He's the ship's doctor [this specific ship] -> el es el médico del barco
He's a ship doctor [generally works in ships] -> el es médico de barco
Matasanos is slang for a bad doctor of dubious talent, it literally means someone who kills healthy people xD
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 further back you go in Indo-European languages, they don't have articles. It's a relatively recent innovation.
So for example latin didn't have them. Eventually they evolved from ille and unus.
Much of Eastern Europe still does not have articles.
The whole (over)insistence on using the determiners in general seems to be a relatively recent innovation as well, the articles being a large part of it. I am talking about constructions like "he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet" — why not just "he shoved hand into pocket and pulled out wallet"? The context is pretty self-evident, and if you really need to specify some deviation from it (he shoved his hand into someone else's pocket, but still pulled out his wallet), you always can do it by, you know, using the determiners; except now they actually will be non-redundant.
Indeed that begins to sound like so called caveman talk. He shove hand in pocket and pull out wallet.
1 reply →
> The further back you go in Indo-European languages, they don't have articles.
Heh, while we're discussing English, this annoys me.
"The further back you go" is a continuum, the effect you describe should be too.
> The further back you go, the fewer Indo-European languages have articles.
Or match a discontinuity with a discontinuity.
> If you go back beyond a certain point, Indo-European languages don't have articles.
I actually meant it as a continuum. In classical latin, ille and unus exist, but they are not articles. In the vulgar latin period circa 800ad, they are pretty close to articles. In modern romance they're articles.
You can't say "beyond a certain point" because what point that is varies with geography.
You can say "they are the doctors" -- but yeah it's a slightly different meaning.
BTW in German, it's a fun distinction. The old "ich bin (ein) Berliner". (or hamburger or frankfurter...)
Works in English too:
* I am Danish.
* I am a Danish.
Or
* I am dancer.
* I am a dancer.
There is no plural equivalent of a/an. So where you would use a/an becomes no-article for plural nouns.
I suppose you could say, “they are both doctors” or “they are all doctors.”
Those sound fine to me, depending on context.
And there we get to the word both or all, where interestingly Mandarin has an (over)insistence on using it, even in places, where it seems unnecessary.
Yes, but then it may sound as if "both/all" is being highlighted which it isn't in the neutral "they are doctors" statement
> Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
Here the 'a' is shifting position to become the world final 's'
It is not the set-pertinence that would get transformed into a plural.
Over-learning Portuguese (as a beginner) almost make me feel that "He is a doctor" should become "They are as doctors".
il est docteur
vs
c'est un docteur
In "They are doctors" the 'they' is the subject and you don't need articles. 'They' is plural.
But in "The doctors are female" you do because the subject is some specific group of doctors. It's singular because its a single group of things.
> you don't need articles. 'They' is plural.
But why not? Plural indefinite article exists in some languages, why not in English?
I can’t speak about other languages but in my head the simplest reason is that English “a/an” specifies “one”, eg “I have a cat and two dogs.” I googled and confirmed a/an is Old English for “one” but otherwise they didn’t use articles. I assume it’s a similar origin story for other languages like “un/una/une”. In that case, it’s equally strange that other languages would make “one” plural imo.
Is French different? Il est un médecin? Il est médecin? Ils sont médecins sounds fine.
Nope, it's basically as in spanish:
> Il est un médecin?
Nope that's bogus french: you say "il est médecin". But you can say: "c'est un médecin".
> That's bogus
To expand a bit, it's a perfectly valid use, but most people will forgo having an extra word that has no role in the phrase.
"Il est médecin" and "Il est un médecin" are perfectly equivalent so people will choose the shorter.
The "un" comes back when using the noun as an adjective isn't possible anymore, e.g. by adding an actual adjective "Il est un bon médecin"