Latin is also the cat
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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Ha! All three of the big East Asian languages also don't have articles. (It's also why we drop them all the time when learning to speak English.)
I just assume anyone not using articles is a Roman
Internet Romanis plenum est
Persian(Farsi) also doesn't have a word for "The". We just say the word. There's also no gender prefixes. The whole language is gender neutral.
Our ancestors were really up to something thousands of years ago.
In English, there is an implied difference between “the girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘the girl’ implying expected knowledge - “oh, her”) versus “a girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘a girl’ - random, likely unknown).
More broadly “a thing” - one of many, “the thing” - a specific one.
How would that translate to Farsi?
We do the opposite. If something is known we just say it.
"The girl(1) is playing(2) violin(3) downstairs(4)"
دختر(۱) در طبقهی پایین(۴) ویالن(۳) مینوازد(۲)
To refer to an unknown thing we add a prefix ی to the thing
A girl -> دختری
The girl -> دختر
Don't know about Farsi, but in Russian you would have to declare your knowledge and specificity of the subject. You can transmit some of that information by changing word emphasis, but it's not very clear.
As for your sentences I would translate them as:
- The girl downstairs was playing violin → Девушка [girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
- A girl downstairs was playing violin - Внизу [downstairs] девушка [girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
The first one puts more emphasis on the "girl". The second one puts more emphasis on "downstairs", almost suggesting that the identity of the girl doesn't matter, kinda "some girl who happened to be downstairs". But it is not as explicit as a definite/indefinite article for sure.
If you want to make it certain that the identity of the girl doesn't matter, you could use an adjective to that extent: Внизу [downstairs] какая-то девушка [some girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
If you want to make it certain that both you and the person you're talking to know about the girl, you can use a determiner: Та девушка [that girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
I guess the is implied, count is explicit. A thing becomes one thing and the thing becomes thing.
Is the number one used like "a" then? Like a direct translation of the 2 phrases would be "Girl downstairs is playing the violin." and "one girl downstairs is playing the violin." As opposed to English using the/a respectively?
As per Google translate it seems so.
And it kinda has me thinking what all of that extra fat really does for a language. I never feel confused about meaning when speaking Persian, so the the/he/she/it/they/them really can't be doing that much heavy lifting if you can just completely ignore it and have a perfectly functioning language without it.
English acting like it’s not a fucked up language where “the big, red, round, wrapped box” is fine but “the wrapped, round, red, big box” is wrong.
Yeah… English is a frankenstein language…
Also the adjective order is fucked…
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Let's add dialects to the mess:
While not written in "book" German*, colloquial German may feature des, dat, det or dit instead of das, shorten der to dr or elide parts (like the French l', except it may be attached to the previous word): Das ist das Problem mit der deutschen Sprache -> Des isch's Problem mit dr deutscha Sproach
("That is the problem with the German language." Bonus: notice how the demonstrative pronoun "that" is also
das? Just in case you were hoping it was restricted to "the"...)
* Hochdeutsch or Standarddeutsch ("High German" or "Standard German"), originally a written form slowly evolved over centuries to be most widely understood and has since been formalised. Informally, the term is also used for a spoken counterpart properly called Bühnendeutsch ("Stage German"), which isn't always quite as "pure", hence my distinction.
I bloody love my language.
Norwegian:
-en, -a, -et
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