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Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

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."

View on HN

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.

A good parallel in English is actually “going to (or being at) school.” While you can say you’re at “the” school or “a school”, they mean different things than just being at school. Ditto for UK “to hospital.” (Cf. to university, to college, to city hall, in government)

Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.

But he is totally right Spanish is more consistent in that respect, because it has a plural article. You can say "son unos perros" as well when you put that sentence in plural.

Of course, that doesn't say anything about the languages in general, there are also things where Spanish is less consistent. E.g. why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"? I'm a native Spanish speaker and when asked by foreigners about a rule that would explain that, I've never been able to come up with one.

I'm learning Chinese and my feeling is that it's more consistent than both Spanish and English, things actually tend to make a lot of sense in Chinese. A pity that between the tones and the characters, it's much harder to learn than either of them.

>why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"?

I don't know if I'm quite qualified to lecture you on your mother tongue, but AFAIR that's because one is an unchangeable inherent quality (of the movie), and the other one is a temporary condition (of the weather).

As a learner, I find Spanish/Castellano to be quite consistent, actually.

It's normal that one's native language's quirks tend to be very difficult to explain, because you learned them intuitively. E.g. I was surprised to learn from conversations that a lot of Spanish speakers seem to have never heard what the subjuntivo is, and being told, couldn't explain for the life of them why they use it all the time.

But the "rule" you mention has at least one exception: death is clearly not a temporary condition, but a dead person "está muerta" y no "es muerta"

I don't really see that as an exception or contradiction, rather a side effect of my poor way of communicating it. This "rule" isn't meant to be exhaustive, but is a mnemonic device for a more complex set of rules that spans one or more pages in a textbook. It works in my head. ;)

The way I see it, a dead person used to be alive before "changing state": in that sense it's a "condition", even if it's not exactly temporary. The difference between ser and estar stems from the inherence of a quality.

I've seen it put in English as: ser is about what something or someone is, estar is used for the how. (You can say: Es un muerto. Because that's what he is. But: Está muerto. He was alive.)

Dato curioso: supuestamente en España se dice "estar casado", en Latinoamerica es "ser casado". Make of that what you will...

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.)

I'm not sure this is the best achievable example, but maybe:

"The street vendors have decided to oppose the ordinance."

"But I thought Mike and Jacob said they support the ordinance. And Julia! Aren't they vendors?"

"They are some vendors, but most vendors take the opposite position."

That one is more natural without the word "some" imo

I agree, so it's still not an ideal example.

Depends where the stress is.

"They are some vendors, not all vendors" is natural.

"They are vendors, not all vendors"is equally natural.

Written without stress indicators, most dialog can sound unnatural.

> "They are vendors, not all vendors" is equally natural.

No it isn't. For example, I am a native speaker, and I have no idea what you wanted that sentence to say. There is no available contrast between the emphasized words, leaving me mystified as to why they're both emphasized.

Looking up through the context, I think what you want is "They are vendors, but they aren't all vendors." That's still not a felicitous way to express it; you'd be better off with "They are vendors, but they aren't every vendor." (Because "They aren't all vendors" is most naturally interpreted to mean "not all of them are vendors", with all as an adverb, as opposed to "not all vendors are one of them", with all as a determiner.)

More simply: "Some vendors support the ordinance, but most oppose it."

"Who are the noisy people outside?"

"They are some vendors" seems natural to me, suggesting that the group of vendors is known to the person answering.

This sounds to me like something a native french speaker would say in english. I feel like most english speakers would respond, “They are vendors,” “Just some vendors,” “It’s some vendors,” or even just “Vendors,” but not “They are some vendors.”

And “they are some vendors” usually actually means “they are excellent vendors”!

Really depends on how you say “some”

I will die on the hill that "SOME PIG" from Charlotte's Web was merely an existential determiner.

Exceptional rather than excellent I'd say, i.e. not necessarily positively exceptional.

Even more common with "the". "They are THE vendors", which is either to say that those are definitely the vendors referred to elsewhere, or that they represent the archetype of vendors (whatever that is). Language is weird.

Yeah, definitely inflection-based. A more relaxed one would indicate "a small amount", which for the opposite could be directly swapped with "many".

And doesn't "some vendors they are" mean the opposite?

Yes, unless Yoda you are.

Back in the days when I had to take some latin for my studies, our lecturer always used to say "don't ask my why, latin might be more logical than most languages, but it's a language not math. Languages are not logical". It actually became a bit of a running gag because we still had some students who needed to ask why for every rule.

There's a reason your parent comment expected some to be "an article". It is the plural of a(n). It's just that the term "article" was defined not to include it. There's a different word for the part of speech.

No, some is not an indefinite article, it is a quantifier word, just like "few" or "many". This is most easily visible in the fact that you can say "A: How many pears should I buy? B: Just buy some." - which would not be possible for an article, which must always be attached to a noun (you would never answer "Just buy a" in response to that question).

> No, some is not an indefinite article, it is a quantifier word, just like "few" or "many".

Quantifier words and articles are all the same part of speech. It's still true that the plural of a(n) is some.

There are other ways to use some - for example, it can be singular too - but that doesn't affect the question.

Articles and quantifiers are different parts of speech in most grammars. Articles are specifically different in having no independent meaning, more similar to prepositions than to adjectives (which some is classified as in its use as a quantifier that we were discussing here).

English just doesn't have an indefinite plural article. This is not actually that uncommon - German has the same property, for example.

Interestingly, when you speak about a category as a whole, in English, you use the null article (“cats meow” or “I like apples”), whereas in French, you would use the definite article (« les chats miaulent », « j’aime les pommes »).

«cats» in «cats meow» and «apples» in «I like apples» are not categories, they are bare plural noun phrases with generic reference. They refer generically to members of the relevant class, rather than naming the class itself.

Both are count nouns, and, in English, a plural count noun takes the null article when it is used with generic or non-specific indefinite reference rather than to denote a contextually identifiable set.

However, in

  Cat is divided into numerous breeds.

  Cat excludes animals such as dogs and foxes.

  Apple excludes such fruits as pears and peaches.

  Apple contains numerous cultivated varieties.

«cat» and «apple» are categories.

“Cats meow” is “about” the whole of what makes up the category as opposed to parts of it. I thought it quite clear that that’s what I meant. If I ask you “could you please tell me more about Barack Obama?”, I would expect you to tell me about the person that the name “Barack Obama” refers to, not about the name “Barack Obama”.

> “Cats meow” is “about” the whole of what makes up the category as opposed to parts of it.

No. That is, at best, a highly informal proposition and, at worst, a frivolous disposition masquerading as a definition of «category».

Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.

The Obama analogy illustrates reference vs mention, but that distinction is orthogonal to the actual semantic disagreement.

Which itself is completely orthogonal to the point I was making. You can imagine I said “dinosaurs are extinct” and « les dinosaures ont disparu » if that makes you feel better.

> That is, at best, a highly informal proposition

That’s what it was meant as, yes, since you seemed to be misinterpreting what I was getting at (contents of the category as opposed to meta-commentary about the categorisation). The goal was to clarify, not to publish to an academic journal.

> Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.

Irrelevant.

Since categories have been invoked, we are discussing semantics.

«As a whole» leaves unclear whether your example means the kind itself, its members generally or every member without exception as they are three distinct interpretations. This is what I have remarked on.

«Cats meow» attributes characteristic behaviour to cats generally.

«Dinosaurs are extinct» attributes a property to a kind, making it a better example supporting kind reference.

The latter also establishes that English bare plurals can denote kinds. Their grammatical form does not guarantee that interpretation: «cats entered the dumpster» concerns individual cats on a particular occasion.

I never said it guarantees it. I said that when you discuss entire categories, you use one article in English and another in French, along with examples, and it is applicable to all three interpretations, ergo the distinction is immaterial. Whether it is factual to apply those statements to every single member is completely beside the point.

Also,

> The Obama analogy illustrates reference vs mention, but that distinction is orthogonal to the actual semantic disagreement.

It’s orthogonal to what you have shifted your argument to, but in the context of your original objection, I think it was an apt analogy.

The other way around, Spanish uses the definite article where English would not:

• Tengo los ojos azules -> I have blue eyes (not I have the blue eyes)

• Juego el tenis -> I play tennis (not I play the tennis)

Though as with the indefinite article, at least there is no discrepancy between single/plural. In part it is necessary because there are some words that don't vary their spelling in different genders but do have different meaning:

• la papa -> the potato, el papa -> the pope (also el papá -> the dad)

• la capital -> the capital (as in city), el capital -> the capital (as in money)

• la corte -> the court, el corte -> the cut

[I had to look those up to check, I'd have had cut/court back-to-front otherwise!]

Another thing that doesn't exist in English is an equivalent to the “personal a”: vi a Fred -> I saw Fred, vi cuatro gatos -> I saw four cats (both languages use a definite or indefinite article for a single non-personal subject: vi un gato / vi el gato -> I saw a cat / I saw the cat). I suppose it could be said that Spanish is more consistent here too: there is always something in that position for simple forms, be it a count, an article, or a. I say “for simple forms” as there is nothing there for thing like “vi oscuridad en sus ojos” -> I saw darkness in his/her eyes (though in both languages either definite or indefinite article would also work but might suggest different emphasis: I saw a darkness in… / I saw the darkness in…).

Something that Spanish has, that your "vi a Fred" example reminded me of is that when the direct object of a sentence is a person, you use "a": "vi a Fred", "escuché a mi mamá". Unlike unhuman objects: "vi el carro", "escuché un ruido".

That is exactly what I referred to: the personal “a”. Used when referring to a person.

At least in Chile, we say "juego tenis", or maybe "juego al tenis" ('al' being the contraction of 'a' and 'el', i.e. 'to the'), but not "juego el tenis" (that sounds weird)

Certainly English can be odd. It can usually be understood through tough thorough thought though.

A thorough thought, though a tough one to plough through.

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".

It's uncommon, but without thinking about it, I wouldn't have noticed that I wouldn't usually add the "ein" here. I think it emphasizes the affiliation to the group of people.

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.)

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.

Is it possible that after the JFK speech and exposure to English this mode of using 'ein' actually became more acceptable? If not I wonder what drove this story.

I think it's much more likely this story was spread by native English speakers who learned German as a second language in school. It has all the hallmarks of a teacher's pedantry to me.

That said, blunders do occasionally happen even at this level. During Bill Clinton's visit in Romania (the first time a US president visited the country after the Revolution), he said in a huge public speech that the American people stands shoulder to shoulder with the Romanians - which the translator for the public broadcast translated as "șold la șold", which sounds similar, but means "hip to hip" (the correct translation, which is also a literal translation as the expression exists in Romanian as well, is "umăr la umăr").

Wikipedia has a lengthy section about this 'gaffe', including the likely origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Urban_leg...

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

German speaker here, you can say either and they're both equally correct, don't pretent to be some sort linguistic savant here lmfao

Both may be correct, but one is more prevalent. And in English, the article is always required.

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

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 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.

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.

And yet e.g. włożył rękę do kieszeni i wyjął portfel is a pretty natural-sounding Polish sentence. Grug trusts others not stupid.

I don't think the context is self evident at all. It's very important to know whose pocket he picked.

I'm going to guess this could be a bias from speaking English. In romance languages, for example, you would often use an article rather than a possessive pronoun for this type of construct.

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.

At last, some actual linguistics.

The really common "determiners" are this, that, and possessive forms such as their and your.

People often call those last words (your, his) "possessive pronouns", which always confused me because they are obviously not nouns. They are actually "possessive determiners", which is quite logical. The possessive pronouns are mine, ours, etc.

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Alas there is none but I can recommend the Lexicon Valley podcast.

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?

That sounds odd. Like in your example the nature answer would be “He’s the games master”. Without “the” article, one could get confused like okay is he the game master for this game or is he just a game master for some other game

I think because someone wouldn't answer "he is a gamesmaster" to the example question, "who is running this rpg", it makes it less odd.

If the Q was "who can run this game?" maybe then it would be ambiguous because it could imply others may also be a gamesmaster.

So the context of dropping the "the" can only really happen when there's no ambiguity.

“He is President” works when it’s clear which position you’re referring to.

“He is doctor” sounds wrong because there’s rarely just one doctor.

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).

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.

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".

> Are you feeling through memory or through logic?

This feels (feeels, before you ask again) like begging the question. We're talking about a natural language here, not a programming language. It has rules but they evolved through natural usage, and those rules are flexible ("because internet"), and there's plenty of technically correct but wrong feeling constructions ("bad big wolf").

Like, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" will sound like the raving of a madman regardless of the fact that it's technically valid.

> Commander, General, Loyal Servant, Father to a murdered son.

I mostly think that that's a weird collection of things to all be at once to a murdered son.

"Brothers, sisters, comrades, and also people who are not my relatives or acquaintances. Today is a sad day..."

> I mostly think that that's a weird collection of things to all be at once to a murdered son

Were you joking, or you never heard it? «My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife». I have not seen the movie yet I know the quote...

> feels

Feelings can have wrong roots and be corrected by better consideration.

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.

* I am dancer.

* I am a dancer.

“I am dancer” is acceptable if you’re a five year old. However “I’m Danish” is correct English

In "I'm Danish" it's an adjective. With "I'm a Danish" it's a noun, stating you are a pastry.

But only in US English!

You can say “I’m Danish” or “I’m British”. If you want to use an article and convey the same meaning then it would be “I’m a Dane” or I’m a Brit”

I think you missed the joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry

> A Danish pastry (sometimes shortened to Danish)

I always thought that "some" was technically an article (the plural form of "a"/"an") but I hadn't considered how plurals weren't used in phrases like that.

One thing I did notice about strangeness in English articles is how British English seems to use definite articles in places where American English uses indefinite ones. Back when reading Murder on the Orient Express in school, I remember finding it amusing how one character mentioned that he had "the toothache", which as an American to me sounded like he was saying there's only one toothache in the world that just travels around to me or something.

Articles are weird. My very inexperienced impression is that maybe the only weirder thing is how inconsistently prepositions map to each other between languages, which never seems to be 1:1. Sometimes there's even variation within a language; I always grew up saying "by accident", so it sounds wrong to me when I hear someone say "on accident" but I also realize there's no objectively more correct phrasing.

> the toothache

As a native of England, “he had the toothache” sounds odd to too. I would say “he had a toothache” or just “he had toothache”. Though we aren't entirely consistent: “he had flu”, “he had the flu”, are both fine. “he had a flu” would normally sound wrong (though is technically correct, there are many flu viruses) but “he had a cold” is always fine. “he had the cold” only works in a context where it would be understood as a shorthand for something like “he had the cold that was going around”.

> I always grew up saying "by accident", so it sounds wrong to me when I hear someone say "on accident" but I also realize there's no objectively more correct phrasing.

If speaking actual English rather than a North American variant, “by accident” is objectively the correct phrasing. I'm not aware of any common accent from England in which “on accident” is used.

I just double checked and it's exactly what I remembered; the detective was interviewing someone explicitly described as being English (who in the same conversation said they had never been to America): https://esl-bits.eu/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/The%20Or...

> “I went to bed, sir, but I didn’t sleep.”

> “Why didn’t you sleep?”

> “I had the toothache, sir.”

I'm inclined to trust Agatha Christie to have accurately reflected speech patterns that someone from England at least with a certain social status at a given point in time. Maybe it's not common anymore, or it used to be common in America as well back in the day.

> If speaking actual English rather than a North American variant

At this point you've at least disagreed with Agatha Christie about what English from someone from England sounds like, and now you're claiming that English as spoken by far more people than in England isn't "actual" English, so it's not clear to me that taking what you're saying at face value is worthwhile. It honestly seems like you have a bit of an inflated sense of authority about the language because the name of it happens to have originated with where you're from to the point where you're dismissive of anything other than your own direct knowledge, even when it's from a world-renowned author who has the same regional source of authority as you.

And you sir, appear to have taken my view rather personally.

There is nothing wrong with American English, but it is American English: English as commonly spoken in America. Just as Australian English is Australian English, and so forth. I was pointing out that in the former what you (a speaker of the latter) found strange would also not sound correct.

> I'm inclined to trust Agatha Christie to have accurately reflected speech patterns that someone from England at least with a certain social status at a given point in time.

Social status and point in time are doing a lot of work there. I don't know the character being discussed at all, it could also be that she intended to give him a slightly out-of-place mode of speech. In any case, you'd need more than one example to suggest the form is/was commonly considered correct. Writers, even those of her standing, do make mistakes, and if it wasn't deliberate then editing it after initial publication was not as practical back then as it might be today.

> spoken by far more people than in England isn't "actual" English

It is a form of English. American English. You can call what I speak British English if you like (avoid English English - that will offend people from other parts of the isles/union, who each maintain a linguistic history which predates them being part of the larger entity) and no one will be offended. But claiming the language for your own just because there are more of you, is somewhat tasteless in a “Lake America” way. There are more Spanish speakers in South America than mainland Spain, but they don't take exception to the distinction being drawn between Spanish and Latin American Spanish, where the variants have diverged.

> And you sir, appear to have taken my view rather personally.

Yes, I find it somewhat offensive when people act smug about their specific form of language because it's so heavily tainted by attempts to claim cultural superiority (not just between different countries, but often between subcultures in the same area). Saying that you speak "actual" English and I don't and then clutching your pearls at the fact that I point out it's a pretty terrible thing to say is just passive-aggressive. Being formal and pretending that you were being polite about it doesn't make it less rude.

> Social status and point in time are doing a lot of work there. I don't know the character being discussed at all, it could also be that she intended to give him a slightly out-of-place mode of speech. In any case, you'd need more than one example to suggest the form is/was commonly considered correct. Writers, even those of her standing, do make mistakes, and if it wasn't deliberate then editing it after initial publication was not as practical back then as it might be today.

Sure, I don't disagree with that. I don't see why you had to go out of your way to passive-aggressively insult other cultures than your own to make that point though.

> It is a form of English. American English. You can call what I speak British English if you like (avoid English English - that will offend people from other parts of the isles/union, who each maintain a linguistic history which predates them being part of the larger entity) and no one will be offended. But claiming the language for your own just because there are more of you, is somewhat tasteless in a “Lake America” way. There are more Spanish speakers in South America than mainland Spain, but they don't take exception to the distinction being drawn between Spanish and Latin American Spanish, where the variants have diverged.

Again, you said the words "actual English". That's rude. No amount of flowery language changes that. You're going out of your way to try to make it seem like I was overreacting to an incidental word choice, and that's not a premise I'm ever going to accept.

"He has toothache" or "he has a toothache" are both correct (and mean exactly the same thing), but "he has the toothache" is just wrong, at least in modern English (in the sense that no native speaker would say that)

We don't say "the toothache" but we do say eg. "the measles". So I think it's more an older way of talking than a Britishism.

As for "on accident" I've always assumed this was just a mistake from childhood, kids equating it with "on purpose" and never being corrected. A bit of a bone apple tea.

However I get your point, I used to correct an Indian colleague when he would say expressions a bit wrong, until I gave up and realized it had just become part of his local dialect in the region he was from. (Eg. "I have to go pick my kid" instead of "pick up my kid" which made me laugh at first and then drove me a bit crazy because he would consistently keep saying it.) At some point these things cross a line and become somehow "correct" again, that's just language for you.

A native English speakers we are in a particular spot where we have to just accept that the majority of the world is going to be speaking our language non natively, and that is fine once you get used to it.

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.

Yes, but then it may sound as if "both/all" is being highlighted which it isn't in the neutral "they are doctors" statement

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.

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.

> 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?)

That's just a historical quirk of the terminology. A(n) and the were named articles for no particular reason.

They belong to a much broader part of speech, called "determiners", and some is a determiner just like they are.

They were called articles by analogy to other languages. Determiners is too broad a class, encompassing too many different words with clearly different roles. It happens that in English articles and other determiners such as possessives or demonstratives are exclusive, so this is harder to see.

But in other languages, a noun can have both an article and a possessive, or both an article and a demonstrative. For example, in Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian, you don't say "my dog", you say "il mio cane" / "o meu cão" / "câine-le* meu". In Romanian you even have to say "câine-le* ăla" for "that dog".

English also makes it hard to tell different word classes apart because it has very little variance in words. In other languages, articles have to agree with their nouns in different ways from possessives and/or demonstratives. For example, in German the possessive pronoun has to agree with both the gender of the noun it describes and that of the noun it replaces - "his dog, her dog, his cat, her cat" become "sein Hund, ihr Hund, seine Katze, ihre Katze", whereas of course the definite article only agrees with the gender of the noun it attaches to. Demonstratives in German don't agree with the noun in gender at all.

Also, quantifiers like "some", "none", "a few" etc are different from the above in that they can be used in more ways than just determiners. They can appear standalone as the subject of a phrase, for example, which articles and possessives can't.

* note that standard spelling is "câinele", which is "câine" + the definite article "-le", since definite articles become noun suffixes in Romanian.

Over-learning Portuguese (as a beginner) almost make me feel that "He is a doctor" should become "They are as doctors".

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.

> In that case, it’s equally strange that other languages would make “one” plural imo.

Why? It's very common in English:

I don't want those ones.

In this case the number has been repurposed as a placeholder noun, and the noun is what's pluralized, but that's also what happens when the number is repurposed as a determiner and the determiner gets pluralized.

Good point!

I think it probably just boils down to whether the word is functionally necessary to understand the meaning of the sentence and how the language evolved...

For example, in French you don't usually pronounce the "s" at the end of a plural noun and lots of singular nouns end in "s", so the articles become necessary for determining if you mean plural or singular. In English you pronounce the "s" clearly and very few singular words end in "s", so you just don't need the article to distinguish anything, it becomes functionally redundant.

There are some nouns that are always plurals e.g. "scissors" or "pants", and those things still arguably need indefinite/definite distinction, right? Actually no, the very use of plain "scissors" instead of "*a scissors" demonstrates very well the redundancy of the indefinite article, but let's pretend.

That's just an oddity due to nominally singular items having plural names.

"*a scissors/pants" is correctly "a pair of scissors/pants" and you still use the definite "the scissors/pants"

So "get me scissors" is a bit odd but works only because the singular item happens to have a plural name.

Again, e.g. Bulgarian uses едни ("ones") as essentially plural indefinite article, and for genuinely plural things too. It's not nearly as pervasive as the English usage (the null article is used in most cases), but it exists. While in English you could reply to "Where are you going?" with "To hang out with some friends" ('it doesn't really matter to you which ones exactly'), in Bulgarian that "some" would be translated as "едни", not "няколко" or "някои" (technically, you could use that last one, but the meaning would be that you're yourself not sure with whom exactly you're going to hang out there).

This is not a good explanation, because you could just as well say "I have cat and two dogs". The fact remains that "a cat", "cat", and "the cat" (and "one cat") all have separate meanings; while for plural, you only have "cats" and "the cats".

I can't answer the why question, but out of all Germanic languages, only Faroese has retained the plural indefinite article, although its use is restricted to nouns that 1) only occur in the plural and 2) indicate «a pair/set of», e.g.:

  einar buksur (feminine plural) – a pair of pants

  einir skógvar (masculine plural) – a pair of shoes

Other than that, Germanic languages typically do not have a plural form of the indefinite article.

then you have cases where English skips an article but Spanish does not, such as "what is science fiction?" vs. "¿qué es la cienca ficción?"

It's the same in Italian, but also the same in English. You say "he's president", not "he's a president", for instance.

But that’s because that’s a situation where there’s only one president. If you were in a situation where there were multiple presidents you would definitely say he’s a president.

interestingly there is "ellos son unos payasos" = they are clowns: a judgement, not a statement about their employment

Same in French, Dutch, and probably other languages for “he is doctor” or “I am doctor”

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"

Same in French.

It's just that professions are properties.

> He is tall, he is smart, he is (a) doctor.

> 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.

See also "he's in hospital" and "he's in the hospital" in British and American English.

Same for Portuguese.

il est docteur

c'est un docteur

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