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.
Regardless, 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 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 phrase sounds wrong!
I just saw a unicorn – wow, that phrase sounds correct!
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
Some nouns describe objects called count nouns, which are things that you can count. 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 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.