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An Article is a determiner that can further be subdivided into the definite and indefinite article
Which can then be combined to form different meanings and... uh..
it goes on like this!
A? An? The? Nothing? What's the big deal with articles?
The big deal with articles is that they tell us how much of something there is
and whether or not the speaker already knows about it.
For example:
A house is on fire...
Versus
The house is on fire!!!
The first sentence could be any house
and we don't know if it's important or not
The second house is a very specific house that both speakers know about.
When we introduce something it should usually have "a" or "an" in front of it.
But if all speakers know what we're talking about, it's safe to use "the".
Of course, this is just the tip of the article iceberg.
Things get a lot more confusing and that's where we'll be going next.
Articles are used with countable nouns.
Most objects are countable because we can physically see or separate them.
If it's difficult or impossible to see or separate each part,
then it's non-count.
Some examples of things we can't count are:
rice, hair, milk, water, or beer.
These non-count words need a counter; a word before that lets us count it.
For example: a bowl of rice, or a glass of milk.
Saying "a rice" is incorrect.
We're not sure what you're talking about.
A piece of rice? A bowl of rice?
A pile of rice? A mountain of rice?
We have no idea.
Next time we'll be talking about "the"... or "the"... whatever!
Nerd time!
Originally "a" or "an" comes from the Old English, "one"
meaning, one of something.