Articles english

First the good news:There are only three articles in English: a, an and the.
There are two types of articles indefinite 'a' and 'an' or definite 'the'. You also need to know when not to use an article.
The bad news is that their proper use is complex, especially when you get into the advanced use of English. Quite often you have to work it out by what sounds right, which can be frustrating for a learner.
Indefinite articles - a and an (determiners)
A and an are the indefinite articles. They refer to something not specifically known to the person you are communicating with.
A and an are used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not mentioned before
:-
For example: "I saw an elephant this morning."
"I ate a banana for lunch."
A and an are also used when talking about your profession:-
For example: "I am an English teacher."
"I am a builder."
Note!
You use a when the noun you are referring to begins with a consonant (b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y or z), for example, "a city", "a factory", and "a hotel".
You use an when the noun you are referring to begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u)
Pronunciation changes this rule.
Definite Article - the (determiners)
You use the when you know that the listener knows or can work out what particular person/thing you are talking about.
For example: "The apple you ate was rotten."
"Did you lock the car?"
You should also use the when you have already mentioned the thing you are talking about.
For example: "She's got two children; a girl and a boy. The girl's eight and the boy's fourteen."
We use the to talk about geographical points on the globe.
For example: the North Pole, the equator
We use the to talk about rivers, oceans and seas
For example: the Nile, the Pacific, the English channel
We also use the before certain nouns when we know there is only one of a particular thing.
For example: the rain, the sun, the wind, the world, the earth, the White House etc..
However if you want to describe a particular instance of these you should use a/an.
For example:
"I could hear the wind." / "There's a cold wind blowing."
"What are your plans for the future?" / "She has a promising future ahead of her."
The is also used to say that a particular person or thing being mentioned is the best, most famous, etc. In this use, 'the' is usually given strong pronunciation:
For example:
"Harry's Bar is the place to go."
"You don't mean you met the Tony Blair, do you?"
!Note - The doesn't mean all:-
For example:
"The books are expensive." = (Not all books are expensive, just the ones I'm talking about.)
"Books are expensive." = (All books are expensive.)
The
The word the is the only definite article in the English language, and the most frequently used word in English.
The article "the" is used with singular and plural, and countable and uncountable nouns when both the speaker and listener would know the thing or idea already. The article the is often used as the very first part of a noun phrase in English. For example: The end of time begins next Tuesday, at a quarter past four, just after fish and chips.
Here, "the end of time" is a noun phrase. The use of the signals that the reference is to a specific and unique instance of the concept (such as person, object, or idea) expressed in the noun phrase. Here, the implication is that there may be but are not multiple 'ends of time'; which 'end of time' it is that is being referred to is not ambiguous, because time can (supposedly) only end once.
The time is 3:29 p.m.
There are many times, but the meaning here is the time now, of which (at the moment the sentence was produced) there is only one.
In normative spoken English, it takes two forms, the vowel being a schwa before a word starting with a consonant, and otherwise an
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun, and may also specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference. The articles in the English language are the and a (the latter with variant form an). An article is sometimes called a noun marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic term.
Articles are traditionally considered to form a separate part of speech. Linguists place them in the class of determiners.
Articles can have various functions
A definite article (English the) is used before singular and plural nouns; they are used when talking about a particular object.
The cat is on the red mat.
An indefinite article (English a, an) is used before singular nouns; they are used when talking about any group of objects.
A cat is a mammal.
A partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the quantifiers some or any often have that function.
French: Voulez-vous du café ? ("Would you like some coffee?" or "Do you want coffee?")
A zero article is the absence of an article (e.g. English indefinite plural), used in some languages in contrast with the presence of one.
Cats love fish.
Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner
In English, a definite article is mostly used to refer to an object or person that has been previously introduced. For example:
At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.... Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the bear's head.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, appendix D
In this example, a bear becomes the bear because a "mammoth bear" had been previously introduced into the narrative, and no other bear was involved in the story. Only previously introduced subjects, and unique subjects, where the speaker can assume that the audience is aware of the identity of the referent (The government has increased tax) typically take definite articles in English.
By contrast, the indefinite article is used in situations where a new subject is being introduced, and the speaker assumes that the hearer is not yet familiar with the subject:
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
— A traditional nursery rhyme
Reflecting its historical derivation from the number word one, the English indefinite article can only be used with singular count nouns. For mass nouns, or for plurals, adjectives or adjective phrases like some or a few substitute for it, or it is omitted. In English, pronouns, nouns already having another non-number determiner, and proper nouns usually do not use articles. Otherwise in English, unlike many other languages, singular count nouns take an article; either a, an, or the Also in English word order, articles precede any adjectives that modify the applicable noun
In French, the masculine definite article le (meaning the) is contracted with a following word if that word begins with a vowel sound. When the French words de and le are to be used sequentially (meaning of the), the word du is used instead, in addition to the above mentioned use of du as a partitive article.
In various languages other than English, the form of the article may vary according to the grammatical gender, number or case of the noun it combines with. (In some languages the article may be the only indicator of the case, e.g.Der Hut des Napoleon, Napoleon's hat.)
Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old vs. new information, such as topic-comment constructions.
A and an
'A' and 'an' function as the indefinite forms of the grammatical article in the English language and can also represent the number one. An is the older form (related to one, cognate to German ein; etc), now used before words starting with a vowel sound, regardless of whether the word begins with a vowel letter.[1] Examples: a light-water reactor; an LWR (Note: When an acronym is spelled out, rather than spelling out what it is that is represented by the letters in the acronym, the phonetics of the acronym should be used when reading the text aloud. So the use of "a" or "an" as shown in this example is correct based on the proper application of this rule); a sanitary sewer overflow; an SSO; a HEPA filter (because HEPA is pronounced as a word rather than as letters); an hour; a ewe; a one-armed bandit; an heir; a unicorn (begins with 'yu', a consonant sound).
Juncture loss
In a process called juncture loss, the n has wandered back and forth between words beginning with vowels over the history of the language, where sometimes it would be a nuncle and is now an uncle. The Oxford English Dictionary gives such examples as smot hym on the hede with a nege tool from 1448 for smote him on the head with an edge tool and a nox for an ox and a napple for an apple. Sometimes the change has been permanent. For example, a newt was once an ewt (earlier euft and eft), a nickname was once an eke-name, where eke means "extra" (as in eke out meaning "add to"), and in the other direction, "a napron" became "an apron" and "a naddre" became "an adder." "Napron" itself meant "little tablecloth" and is related to the word "napkin". An oft-cited but inaccurate example is an orange: despite what is often claimed, English never used a norange. Although the initial n was in fact lost through juncture loss, this happened before the word was borrowed in English (see orange (word))
Discrimination between a and an
The choice of "a" or "an" is determined by phonetic rules rather than by spelling convention. "An" is employed in speech to remove the awkward glottal stop (momentary silent pause) that is otherwise required between "a" and a following word. For example, "an X-ray" is less awkward to pronounce than "a X-ray," which has a glottal stop between "a" and "X-ray". The following paragraphs are spelling rules for "an" that can be used if the phonetic rule is not understood.

The form "an" is always prescribed before words beginning with a silent h, such as "honorable", "heir", "hour", and, in American English, "herb". Some British dialects (for example, Cockney) silence all initial h's (h-dropping) and so employ "an" all the time: e.g., "an 'elmet". Many British usage books,[citation needed] therefore, discount a usage which some Americans (amongst others) employ as being a derivative of the Cockney.[citation needed] The reason is that the indefinite article a is pronounced either of two ways: as a schwa, or as the letter itself is pronounced, "long a" (actually a diphthong, /eɪ/). Some words beginning with the letter h have the primary stress on the second or later syllable. Pronouncing a as a schwa can diminish the sound of the schwa and melt into the vowel. Pronouncing it as a "long a" does not do this, but as the pronunciation cannot be prescribed, the word is spelled the same for either. Hence an may be seen in such phrases as "an historic", "an heroic", "an hôtel of excellence", or "an hero". Yet most English speakers would object to these uses, as the pronounced "h" is quite awkward following "an".
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is more descriptive than prescriptive, but it advises, "You choose the article that suits your own pronunciation." Theodore Bernstein gives the straight vowel-sound vs. consonant-sound explanation but allows that one should indeed say "an hotel" if they think hotel is pronounced otel.[2]
An analogous distinction to that of "a" and "an" was once present for possessive determiners as well. For example, "my" and "thy" became "mine" and "thine" before a vowel, as in "mine eyes". This usage is now obsolete.
The appearance of an or a in front of words beginning with h is not limited to stress. Sometimes there are historical roots as well. Words that may have had a route into English via French (where all h's are unpronounced) may have an to avoid an unusual pronunciation. Words that derived from German however would use a as the h's would be pronounced. There is even some suggestion that fashion may have had some influence. When England was ruled by a French aristocracy, the tradition may have been to exclusively use an, while when Britain was governed by a German-based monarchy the tide may have changed to a.[citation needed]
Further, some words starting with vowels may have a preceding a because they are pronounced as if beginning with an initial consonant. "Ewe" and "user" have a preceding a because they are pronounced with an initial y consonant sound. "One-armed bandit" also has a preceding a because it is pronounced with an initial w consonant sound.

To add emphasis to a noun, the preceding indefinite article is often pronounced as a long a (just as the definite article would be pronounced as "thee" in such cases), whether or not the schwa, or even "an" would be the appropriate usage. In recent years, there has been a noticeable trend to pronouncing almost all indefinite articles in this way, especially in radio or television announcements or news-reading.
Representing the number one
In addition to serving as an article, a and an are also used as synonyms for the number one, as in "make a wish", "a hundred". An was originally an unstressed form of the number án 'one'.
A and an are also used to express a proportional relationship, such as "a dollar a day" or "$150 an ounce" or "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play", although historically this use of "a" and "an" does not come from the same word as the articles.
The mathematically-minded might heed H. S. Wall's reminder that the statement "I have a son" does not necessarily imply that "I have exactly one son" or that "I have only sons". In other words, "The little words count."[3].
Similarities in other languages
In Hungarian, a and az are used the same way, except that in Hungarian, a(z) is the definite article. Juncture loss occurred in this case as well, since az was the only article in use in 16th century Hungarian (e.g. in the poetry of Bálint Balassa).
In Greek, a and an are root words, cognate with Latin in- (when used as a negative) and English un-, meaning without.
Using Article (A, An, and The)
1. Definite article (The) is used to refer specific thing or person.
Example: The room is very dirty.
2. Indefinite article (A and An) is used to:
a. Represent one (numerical).
Example: I have a cat.
b. Refer thing generally.
Example: A chicken has two wings.
Let’s talk about the difference in using A and An.
1. An is used before nouns beginning with vowel sounds (an egg, an ant, an apple, an accident, etc).
2. A is used before nouns beginning with consonant sounds (a chair, a table, a pen, a book, etc).
How do we use the article?
Let’s try. I’ll give some examples to differentiate the usage of a, an, and the.
An elephant has two tusks and a very long nose.
The little elephant looks so naughty, it always play around.
A couple sentences above show us the usage of an and the. Elephant in the first sentence means every elephant. It could be any elephants (gajah pada kalimat pertama adalah setiap gajah yang ada di dunia, bisa saja gajah yang manapun. Sedangkan gajah pada kalimat kedua adalah gajah kecil itu atau hanya seekor gajah tertentu yang dimaksud).
There is another example for you.

A cat likes eating fish.

The black cat with white spots on its face is mine.

Compare those sentences above. Cat in the first sentence means every cat in the world it culd be any cats (kucing pada kalimat pertama yaitu setiap kucing yang ada di dunia).
And cat in the second sentence means only one cat. That is the black cat with white spots on its face (kucing pada kalimat kedua hanya seekor kucing tertentu, yaitu kucing yang bulunya berwarna hitam dengan ciri-ciri bercak-bercak putih di wajahnya).
Articles
There are only three articles in English: a, an and the.
There are two types of articles indefinite a and an or definite the.
Their proper use is complex especially when you get into the advanced use of English. Quite often you have to work by what sounds right, which can be frustrating for a learner.
We usually use no article to talk about things in general - the doesn't mean all.
For example: "Books are expensive." = (All books are expensive.)
"The books are expensive." = (Not all books are expensive, just the ones I'm talking about.)
Indefinite articles - a and an (determiners)
A and an are the indefinite articles. They refer to something not specifically known to the person you are communicating with.
A and an are used before nouns that introduce something or someone you have not mentioned before:-
For example: "I saw an elephant this morning."
"I ate a banana for lunch."
A and an are also used when talking about your profession
For example: "I am an English teacher."
"I am a builder."
Note!
You use a when the noun you are referring to begins with a consonant (b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y or z), for example, "a city" and "a factory"
You use an when the noun you are referring to begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u)