Definite and indefinite articles

Definite and indefinite articles can come very naturally to native English speakers but can be confusing to English languages learners – particularly when their first language doesn’t have articles.

Let’s start at the beginning.

• The definite article is “the”.
• The indefinite article is “a” or “an”.

If you want to know the technical details: “the”, “a” and “an” are “determiners”. Other determiners include “this”, “that”, “some”, “my”, “his”, “all”, “each”, “both” and so on. Because they are used to modify nouns, they function like adjectives.

We use “the” when we’re referring to something that is definite or specific.

We use “a” or “an” when we’re referring to something that is indefinite or general.

When we say: “I liked the boy”, the person we are talking or writing to will know which boy we mean. It is that particular boy that we liked. We are being definite.

When we say: “I liked a boy”, the person we are talking or writing to won’t know who we are talking about. It could be any boy that we liked. We are being indefinite.

From this, you should be able to see the difference between these pairs of sentences:

• He read the book.
• He read a book.
• She mended the chair.
• She mended a chair.
• We saw the airplane.
• We saw an airplane.

And this also shows the difference between “a” and “an”. We use “a” before a consonant sound and “an” before a vowel sound:

• A banana.
• An apple.
• A train.
• An actor.
• A computer.
• An iPad.
• An hour (The “h” is silent, so the word starts with a vowel sound)
• A hotel (Many people say “an hotel” – but they’re wrong!)

When there is only one of something, we use “the”. For example:

• There is only one Eiffel Tower, so we say: “the Eiffel Tower” – we are being definite.
• There is only one Pacific Ocean, so we say: “the Pacific Ocean”.

There is more to learn about definite and indefinite articles. We’ll deal with this in future posts

^{Posted by Graham}

^{With thanks to Lisa and Max for the questions}