Talk: Grammatical article
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"Some languages such as Chinese, Russian, classical Latin, and Swahili rarely use articles, indicating such distinctions in other ways or not at all. Some languages, including Japanese and Russian do not have them at all (in Russian, if it is absolutely necessary, you can use "one" and "that" in contexts where other languages would use an indefinite and definite article)."
Which category does Russian belong in? I don't know, so I have returned it to the original wording. Kairos 23:32, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, Russian has no articles. But I think that Chinese and Latin have no articles as well? Nikola 08:45, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- At a glance, it looks as if i added "Russian" negligently. I apologize for editing not just boldly, but superficially. --Jerzy(t) 17:26, 2004 Mar 1 (UTC)
"Languages that have grammatical gender usually have their article agree with the gender of the noun (French: le masculine, la feminine)." I don't know if that's true in general, but it's false in Semitic. -phma
I changed the comment about Scandinavian languages using suffixes, because it is probably not true for all of them - e.g Finnish or Saami. It is probably true for Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. David Martland 23:27 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)
- Finland is a Scandinavian country but Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, nor is Sami. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, are. Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language. Sami is the language of an indigenous people, no more Scandinavian than Sioux is English. Ortolan88
- Finnish, Saami, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are all Scandinavian languages. Icelandic is not Scandinavian. Scandinavian is a geographical grouping; as linguistic affiliation, it is a subgroup of the Germanic language family. A better way of putting this would be: The Scandinavian group of the Germanic languages. This narrows the field down to Danish, Swedish and Norwegian (and by default, Icelandic, due to the nature of its descent from Norwegian). thefamouseccles 00:53 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
So what's the phrase for "the plane"? Et plan or ett plan? I see both "et" and "ett", so we better get rid of "ett" (I think). Anyone who knows Swedish wants to confirm this? Wiwaxia 20:44, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- In Swedish, a suffix is used instead of a definite article, so "the plane" translates into "planet". "Ett plan" is also correct Swedish, but that means "a plane".
- Best Regards
- Torbjörn Sivebrand
- ten.dnarbevis@nrojbrot backwards (no need to give the spammers an easy ride)
