Tip 7
A\an vs. The
The following tip will help you significantly improve the way you sound when you speak English, and avoid an elementary mistake that many 2nd language learners make.
Below are three sentences, take a few moments and try translating them (Hebrew or another language):
- אני מורה
- היא מהנדסת
- תן לי עט
Many will translate these sentences like this:
– I am teacher (incorrect)
– She is engineer (incorrect)
– Give me pen (incorrect)
What is the correct translation?
– I am a teacher (correct)
– She is an engineer (correct)
– Give me a pen (correct)
We will note that there is a whole word that we added in the English translation (unlike in some languages) – a\an that is not found in the (Hebrew) (language X) sentence.
This word actually also exists in (Hebrew) (language X), but it is not used as often as it is in English…
The closest translation to a\an is the word “some kind”.
In fact the word a\an is the opposite in its meaning of the word the:
- Give me the pen – a specific pen that both of us know of, that I’m interested in.
- Give me a pen – any pen, a non-specific pen, one pen out of many – a unit of something.
We only put the article a\an before nouns in the singular, to indicate whether it is something specific or non-specific. In plural form or for non-countable nouns we do not use this article.
From now on, try to pay more attention when you talk about a noun that is specific or nonspecific – doing this will help improve rapidly and soon you will use these articles like a pro 🙂
