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

Why doesn't Latin have any articles (words for THE, A, AN in English), but the Romance languages do? Why does Latin have a word for the grammatical article, *articulus* , yet the language lacks this part of speech? How do articles develop? Why? Are all articles from the same source, or do they develop independently? Are all languages getting simpler and less sophisticated over time?

Are there no articles in Latin? Are articles used in Latin? Why do some languages not have articles? When did Latin develop articles?

In this video I will discuss these topics, and more!

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Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart

#Rome #Italy #Latin

00:00 Intro
01:05 Greek origins
02:45 Case systems
04:50 Why does the article develop?
09:43 Outtakes

[PodcastItaliano]

I'm amazed at your ability to expose a topic like this without a script and very few cuts. How do you do this? 😅 Great video, Luke!

[dutchie]

In school I learned that "il" in Italian and "le/la" in French came from the Latin demonstrative "ille/illa", meaning "that". Similar to what was mentioned in the video, that the ancient Greek articles also came from demonstratives.

[lunarAureola]

Interestingly enough is that in Gothic, one of the earliest attested Germanic language (now extinct, but there's a growing community reviving the language!), also doesn't have articles.
𐍃𐌰 (sa), 𐍃𐍉 (so) and 𐌸𐌰𐍄𐌰 (þata) are only used as demonstratives (this, that etc.) and only when it's used as an article it's when Gothic tries to "calque" the Greek sentences.

[agatatymczyszyn]

Hi im Polish. Polish, as you have mentioned, has very similar gramatical structure to old indoeuropean languages like latin. My theory is that article emerges as a "phantom" while declension disappears, because declension gives space for flexible sentence structure and enables to achieve the defined article "effect" by putting the word at the beginnig of the sentence and accentuate it.

[WeyounSix]

I think the reason why I love this channel so much even though I don't have a huge interest in Latin specifically, is that I love etymology, and learning you explain things about Latin is really engaging, and you use modern etymological links to make your points, and I love that so much!

[oniricodosfatos]

I'm learning Russian, and it's impressive how many structural similarities it has with Latin...
great video!

[mirceadolineanu]

I'm Romanian, and here we learn a lot of grammar in school (including cases), so this was a really interesting video to watch. You kinda make me want to learn Latin to see what that ablative case is all about:)

One interesting note: You mentioned that romance languages in the west don't have cases. I was quite surprised to hear that, since I remember hearing about cases back when I studied French in middle school. I looked it up and it seems that French has cases for pronouns, but not for nouns. This made me realize how peculiar Romanian can be among the romance languages (and why it seems so hard to master for non-native speakers).

[desanipt]

It's actually interesting because in Portuguese it is not obligatory to put the article before a person's name.
The thing is, when you do, you give this nuance that you know the person, she/he is right there, you interact with her often, or see/hear him/her often.
So you'll see it being used in most daily conversations.

When you don't, it makes it feel like you're distant to the person. So you'll probably see it more often without the article in newspapers, narrations in books...

[reppepper]

I did some tutoring of Slovaks, and, of course, they would omit articles, especially when tired, or they would use the wrong one. When I tried to explain when to use which, I realized it’s not always easy to explain.

[lothariobazaroff]

We don't have any articles in Polish and they are for us one of the most difficult aspects of learning foreign languages. Even after years of learning French, English, German and Italian I tend to make a basic mistake such as omitting an article or, more often, using an (the?) indefinite one instead of the definite one (and vice versa). And there are also differences between those languages, for instance you have to say in French: "Les enfants, venez ici !" (lit. *The* children, come here!"). I was very content to discover that there's only one (definite) article in Welsh: "y". It makes learning this interesting language much easier for me.

[rabomarc]

It’s an interesting topic you raise with Bulgarian. I’m a native of another Slavic language and after just looking at Bulgarian articles I can say they look like transformed demonstratives. Which is yet another example for what you’re saying in the video.

[liuliuliu]

I was recently wondering about why Latin doesn't have articles while Spanish does so this was quite enlightening. Keep the good work Luke, I hope your channel helps make Latin "cool" again.

[papmanhunter]

The articles in the modern Roman languages like ‚le’, ‚la’ or ‚il’ obviously came from the Latin demonstrative pronoun ‚ille, illa, illud‘, which means ‚that‘. It‘s an interesting fact, that as you told Homer often used the greek article ‚o’ as demonstrative pronoun. It seems to be a parallelism between ancient Greek and Latin.
I’m Latin teacher in Germany and like your videos very much. Maximas gratias tibi ago!

[jopeteus]

As a Finnish speaker, I found the articles unnecessary at first. In Finnish we know how the words are connected through cases.

One funny fact about Swedish/Danish/Dutch:
Masculine and feminine genders combined into one gender but the neuter gender remained unaffected.
When they taught me Swedish in Finnish schools, they taught us there is "en" gender and "ett" gender without telling us why they even exist.

[MrHermes]

Interesting comment about languages becoming increasingly simple over time, it is often repeated but it's so intriguing to think about how a language could possibly re-develop a case system

[markvoelker]

As a native English speaker, I only became aware of “the” and “a/an” when I studied Russian for a year in college. And when I did learn about articles, I could not understand what function they performed, except to make a sentence “sound right” to my admittedly biased ears. I would say: “Step on the brake!!” to the driver of a car, while a Russian would say “Step on brake!!” What is the difference in meaning? None that I can tell. But the English sentence wastes a moment blurting out that extra sound.

[Joker]

in upper and central german dialects, as well as in the standard german spoken in those areas, people's names also usually come with an article. in the area where I'm originally from, low german was spoken until not too long ago, and using an article with a person's name in our standard german is seen as 'archaic', something not even my grandparents do regularly.

[MensHominis]

It’s super weird, *German* is taking the opposite route from Homeric to classic Greek right now: we’ve been starting to use our _articles_ as demonstrative pronouns, because ‘dieser’ (this one) and ‘jener’ (that one) often sound way too ancient in non-written language! Or maybe we’ve always been doing so and just never stopped? Because I guess German articles too might have developed from demonstratives?
When I was studying Greek, I attended a reading course for Homer only quite late. It was super weird then that suddenly words _without_ articles could be definite *or* indefinite again, while some random τόν in a verse could suddenly mean "this one [male, acc.]", even though this is super German now that I think about it.

[ruiseartalcorn]

Great stuff! Gaelic also doesn't have an indefinite article, however it does have a definite article. Interesting stuff :)

[jakewhittaker]

Such a gem of a channel! Always bringing up fascinating topics! Your videos, and their comments sections, just ooze the sort of discussions that I wish I were lucky enough to get into when I'm in the pub, without getting a lost, vacant look in return, or the classic line, "It's mad how much you're into languages, I can just about manage English!". ..."NO!!! Lay down your pint and marvel with me at Polish cases, or at how their verbs decline in gender in the past tense!"

Thanks for your consistently brilliant content!