7 Bonus Part of Speech: Articles
There’s one last group of words we should discuss, called articles. They have a status kind of like the planet/non-planet Pluto: some people include articles in the list of parts of speech, and some people don’t.
I think it’s a good idea to know about articles so you don’t get confused trying to fit them into one of the other categories.
There are three articles — a, an, and the — and their job is to tell readers whether a singular noun is specific or general/unspecific. We use the to mark nouns as specific, and a/an to mark them as unspecific.
I want to buy a house before I retire.
In this sentence, the article a tells readers that I’m expressing a wish to buy any house, not a specific one.
“A” versus “An”
In the previous example, we used the article a because the object we were describing (a house) was unspecific (ie., we weren’t referring to a specific house). But we also used the article a because the word house starts with a consonant sound.
Contrast that with the sentence below.
An oyster tastes better when it’s fresh.
Here I use an instead of a because the next word — oyster — starts with a vowel sound.
Notice that I said a vowel sound and not a vowel. That’s because sometimes a vowel doesn’t make a vowel sound. For instance, a word like unicorn begins with the sound associated with the consonant y. Words like unicorn should be paired with the a rather than an.
I just saw an unicorn – yuck, that sounds wrong!
I just saw a unicorn – ahh, that sounds much better!
The opposite effect happens in nouns beginning with silent letters, eg., a word like honour, which begins with a vowel sound. Because it starts with a vowel sound, you should use the article an in front of it.
It was a honour to meet you — yuck, that sounds wrong for sure!
It was an honour to meet you — nice, that phrase sounds correct indeed!
But what if you’re referring to a specific thing?
When you’re referring to a specific thing, use the article the, as in the following sentence.
I want to buy the house next door.
Here, the article the indicates that I want to buy a specific house: the one next door.
PRACTICE: Add the correct article
Count vs. Noncount Nouns
Count nouns are things that you can count one by one. For example, if you see some rocks lying on a table, you could count them and know how many rocks there are.
With count nouns, you can use any article.
It would be correct to say, “I see a rock.”
It would also be correct to say, “I see the rock.” (if you were referring to a specific rock)
Other nouns can’t be counted as discrete units. For example, if I saw a puddle of water on the same table, I can’t really count the number of waters in the puddle. Those nouns are called noncount nouns.
With noncount nouns, you can still use the article the, but you should not use a/an.
It would still be correct to say, “I see the water.” (if referring to some specific body of water)
But it would be incorrect to say, “I see a water.”
Instead, you would leave out the article and say, “I see water.”
Consonants are the letters of the alphabet that are not vowels.