Why Latin doesn't have a word for “THE” • Evolution of Grammatical Articles in Languages

The “Article Before Given Name” thing I do know from archaic Northern Swedish. I haven’t seen it anywhere else, as I yet don’t know any Greek (Latin however).

There were so many interesting grammatical features in old Swedish dialects that I’d be interested to delve into. But on the occasions when there’s any focus put into that at all, it’s usually just about rare grammar/slang/expressions, and rarely ever about whole structure and grammar.

Now so much of that is lost forever.

I myself grew up in a home where Standard Swedish was spoken. I know older Northern Swedish from anecdotes.

Hello, it's very easy to see that the greek articles come from demonstratives if you compare them to other indoeuropean languages. When I talk with someone about it, I think it's the easiest to compare their accusatives to accusatives of Polish demonstratives.
Thus, to compare Ancient Greek τόν, τήν, τό, with Polish ten, tę/tą, to. You can reconstruct these in PIE as *tóm, *tā́m, *tód.

In the Russia language we don't have "articulus" at all.

Bulgarian but Macedonian too! Those two languages form the eastern group of south slavic languages. Both don't have cases and have articulation (both articles and sufixes).

Grammar sucks because the definition of grammar terms seems to be shifting all the time. I believed that the definition of article used to mean 'a', 'an', 'the' in English. Now it only means 'the'. If we were to define the meaning of an article as a short word that doesn't necessary have any meaning, the word is "just there", then the Latin 'a' functions pretty much the same way.

The is a form of (or developed from) this/that, a/an is a form of one.

I like what you said about complexity in languages over time. Tibetan is an example of a language that originally didn't have a case system (Proto-Sino-Tibetan) but has deveoped one. Now Tibetan has absolutive, ergative, genitive, ablative, associative, and oblique cases.

As a Gringo often traveling to Brazil, I learned "street" Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro. It was not uncommon, in a informal conversation, to omit the article. When I traveled to Portugal, I had to be cognizant to use the articles.

You forgot to talk about arthropods. You can rectify this in your next video.
Other than that, a very good and interesting presentation.

Luke I found your perplexity about the point of a neuter case odd. Maybe it’s because you came to Italian as your second language or is it your first and English your second? 🤔Retaining neuter and dropping gendered articles as English did makes much more sense to me. Why? Because most things don’t have a gender, so why attach an artificial gender to them. What is the sex of a chair or a bed, or whatever?

But huge numbers of things are unsexual, or neuter. In English things that really have a gender are expressed in the word for what they are, like girl. The really weird thing is when other languages with gendered and neuter articles like German will use a neuter article for something that is clearly associated with a gender, like the neuter article das for girl (Madchen) or for the male member. Now that to me is very strange

mate, you could have listed Romanian too :)

Celtic languages 'still' just have a definite, all from a root sind-. The Gaelic form of it is especially complex, moreso than the German one in forms. It varies with case, number, gender and interacts with the start of the noun based on whether it is a consonant/vowel, what place of articulation it has, if an s, whether it is followed by a vowel, plosive or resonant, sometimes applying consonant mutation of eclipses. Then there is dialect eg. sneachd ʃɲaxk, an t-sneachd ən tɲaxk although n after plosives very commonly goes to ɾ. This combined with re-evolved nasal mutation means there are folk who say ən dɾaxk (but also ʃɲaxk).

Hi Luke. Just wanted to point out that in some places in german they also put articles in front of names: Der Jesoph hat uns gesagt, dass [...].

The German language has both: articles and cases. When we speak in Polish in a non-formal way, we build the sentences with "articles". Np. sentence: Jedna dziewczynka szła chodnikiem po ciemku. Kiedy jakiś samochód zaczął się zbliżać, ta dziewczynka wystraszyła się". (One girl walked in the dark on the pavement. When the card approached, this girl was scared). The word Jedna=one in this case is actually an indefinite article. Then the word ta=this is a definitive article. But we still have cases. Obviously, the sentence is not stylish. In proper language, the sentence wouldn't have any mentioned "articles". They are not needed.

Except for Bulgarian... and Macedonian. Russian is not a good example of the Slavic language. The word to be is very limited in Russian, while in other Slavic languages, this word is used in many forms. This word is quite essential when you build the sentences.

When I was a kid and didn't know better, I thought that western Romance articles came from the Germans that invaded.

Languages 📜 definitely get grammatically simpler, even if the meaning conveyed stays the same complexity or even increases in complexity.

At least since the Bronze Age.

Bonum Festum Omnium Sanctorum!

Can case systems develop from articles, pronouns, prepositions, and post positions?

Great video, i am doing a classical Latin module for the OU as part of my degree, I am loving it and do love that they took words from the ancient Greeks, but choose to not keep some and change it to adapt. Ancient Greek looks to complex for me at the moment though.

Learn Hungarian, since 2000 years no need for change. it is perfect how it is. No need to change, not today!

Hats off you earned my complete respect 🎉

Similar in irish....ol mé buideal ( i drink bottle ) .... not a bottle.

It's why Slavic people f.ex. Polish loved to learn Latin in the past. Latin, Greek and Slavic languages doesn't have article. All articles in f.ex. english, french generaly make no sense for Slavic.

An interesting fact about Bulgarian: Bulgarian MOSTLY doesn't have cases, but there is 1 situation where cases and articles cross. If a noun is masculine and a subject, it gets one article. If a noun is masculine and a non-subject, it gets a different article. This doesn't not work with neuter or feminine. This does not work with accusative, dative, etc.; masculine article doesn't go deeper than subject and non-subject.

Bulgarian hasn't fully transitioned to a non-case language, but it is 99% of the way there.

Because our culture is degrading.

I didn't quite understand something... So it is that the words "είς, μία, έν" in Ancient Greek aren't the indefinite articles? ( I'm Greek and I' ve been studying Ancient Greek many years in school but I don't remember something being said about this topic, I'll appreciate it very much if you responde, I love the work you do✨🦋❤️

Love this. The relationship of languages over time is more interesting than simply learning to speak them. At least to me. 😊

The neuter gender in ancient Greek initially indicated objects (like in English). That's why the nominative and accusative is the same for the neuter gender. An object could not act as a subject, for the ancients, despite animistic religion

Great video! This came up for me some years ago, when I taught English as a Second Language and I had a class of Russians, Koreans, and others. Previously, I'd only ever taught Spanish-speakers, so when the students requested a segment on the definite and indefinite articles, it took me a while to a) figure out what was involved and b) how to teach it. (I presented them with a deck of cards: "Pick a card. Now give the card to 'X.')

Historically, if I recall correctly, both German and Russian went through a period when they used adjectival endings to convey definiteness.

I think it's interesting and amusing how languages fix on various degrees of definiteness. French, for instance, romanticizes 'la vie' whereas English is content with 'life,' and Spanish 'La Beltraneja' sounds somehow more respectful than our plain 'Beyoncé.'

Also, considering your extraordinary facility with languages, a couple of pronunciations stuck out all the more, viz., 'bilabial' and 'Cypriot,' v. recommended 'buy LAY bi al' (and sell velar) and 'SIPP ri ot.' For instance, in Handel's 'Theodora,' Venus is referred to as the 'SIPPrian Queen."

And, finally, as long as I'm on pronunciation, maybe you could make a video tackling the pronunciation of Classical Latin and Greek in modern English. I confess to being a little annoyed when recently weather reporters spoke of 'Hurricane Bay-ta' and 'Ay-ta' while also saying 'Hurricane Alfa' and 'Thay-ta' - not 'Alp'a' and 'T'ay-ta. (I myself would just go with 'Alfa,' 'Bee-ta,' 'Ee-ta,' 'Zee-ta,' 'Thee-ta.') Or, again in Handel - in 'Alexander's Feast' - one hears Thaïs pronounced 'THAH-iss,' not 'THAY-iss.'

Two things:
1. I too used to be guilty of that sort of "language devolution" way of thinking, but one reason I sort of idolized the case systems & the genders (which I personally would still rather have than English's articles) was because I thought of what they could do if utilized properly, whereas a lot of languages that have them don't seem to do so. Let me explain: in theory, the neuter gender is used for neutral nouns, feminine for feminine, & masculine for masculine. In practice however (using German as an example), turnips are feminine, girls are neuter, etc. Same with cases usually.

2. I personally don't believe there's any connection between cases & articles, just for lack of a visible pattern. Some languages have articles, some have cases, some have both, & there doesn't seem to be a particular case of which we can say "ok, when they lose this one, then they get a definite article" or something like that. But that may just be me. Awesome video, Luke! Keep it up!

Tus videos son brillantes!
Felicidades !

Great video. I'm Croat and Croatian language has 7 cases. In that part of grammar Croatian has lot of similarities with Latin. Being a native speaker of a language that has no articles, they have always seemed wierd to me, especially in German and English language. By the way, Macedonian language has articles like Bulgarian.

There is considerable evidence that Mycaenean Greek had an extra case, the Instrumental. It ended in -ω -οις -α -αις -η -φι In the singular and plural of the 3 declensions.

I was told once that if a language has a finite vocabulary there will be a complex grammar system to allow every word maximum function, while a language with an infinite vocabulary will lose or forsake a complex grammar, because there are so many options for expressing nuances, e.g. Latin (complex grammar, limited vocabulary) vs English (simple grammar, exhaustive vocabulary).

Can you also include the Elvish tongue in these topics?

Random comment: those badges aren't big enough.

It's honestly really interesting for me whether there is any kind of connection between articles and cases. Latin has a bunch of cases but no articles, same for nearly all slavic languages, romance languages now have articles but no cases and the same goes for Bulgarian and most germanic languages iirc. And then there's German and Greek that you mentioned which have both. Is there any way in which cases and articles make each other obsolete within a language? Is it just an accident and a result of languages both losing and gaining complexity in many different areas with no real connection between the two? It just seems very peculiar that languages in Europe seem to gravitate towards one or another but rarely towards both.

Thank you, very interesting!

One year late, but I'll add my 2 cents. Something not mentioned in the video, or comments (the ones I've seen, I didn't read all of them)
The definite article in Romanian is proclitic (at the end), and it is joined to the word, like an inflection.
for example:
* pisică - o pisică - pisica (cat, a cat, the cat)
* cal - un cal - calul (horse, a horse, the horse)
* pisici - - pisicile (cats, ..., the cats)
* cai - - caii (horses, ..., the horses)
For more fun: calului (of the horse / to the horse :-)

Catalan does a similar "the+name" which even carries into castilian Spanish as spoken by a native catalan

So why is German making me decline articles according to case? 😭

We sometime use the definite article "la" "le" in French for a person's name for special effect. I didn't realize that until you mentioned it.

Excellent ! Thankyou !

Swedish (and probably the other Nordic languages) also doesn't have a word for "the". So for example Hus (House) becomes Huset (the house), and Bro (Bridge) becomes Bron.

We were always t6aught the gender of objects requiring an article came from the gods that were assigned to each object. I don't know how true that is, but it reminds me of a scene in the series Britannia where the two stoned Roman soldiers are discussing Guido, the god of boots. It's one of the funniest things I've watched since Monty Python's Life of Brian and the Latin phrase.