h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know - however there are some problems with the proposal, one of which is highlighted in the example you give: -

"Geological maps of bedrock are basic reference source for information concerning Earth's crust."

and

"Geological maps of bedrock are a basic reference source for information concerning the Earth's crust."

If the article "a" was replaced with "the" there is clearly a different meaning to the statement as it would preclude any other reference sources for this information.

So - if you were to ban the use of all articles, it could easily lead to some confusion.

I'm not sure either , but in most cases if you want to point out something specific you could do it otherwise. In most cases if you want to stress fact that this is just one option among others you could add forexample one.

"....of bedrock are one basic....."

or if you specificly want to point out that there is no other way you could add only

"...of bedrock are only basic....."

These of course should be used only if really needed or it would ruin whole idea of article free english. This way existing article free languages work and we are still able to deliver messages just as efficiently.

Yes, but why say 'better' rather than 'differently'?

your examples replace two very short words, 'a' and 'the' with two longer words.

where's the benefit in that?

besides, there is huge diversity among the languages of the world; why would you want to impose your vision on the English language.

In German, a heavily inflected language, there are all kinds of grammatical issues associated with articles that are also complex. English dropped most inflections centuries ago, and continues to develop in its own way, as all languages do.

war on articles...

still, it's an interesting point and a fun way of discussing language,

cyaround
spiff

In this case I had to use two longer words, but if you count all as, ans and thes I can leave out I will still manage to save time and money. Not that I would be greedy but....

Isn't it standard practise to impose one's own visions? It's human nature. I'm no better than anyone else.

Of course all languages go their own way, some of them could go into better direction tough .

I simply got idea for this campaign from Peer review, where every article I've ritten so far at some point got comments like "Otherwise nice and so on, but there are few articles missing". After some thinking I realized that English language could do just as well without them. Entries where understood just as well without artciles than with them.

"but there are few articles missing"

i doubt that's what they said!

i rest my case, m'lud

Incidentally, does Finnish bother with all those inflected forms of nouns and verbs?

No it doesn't because they make sense and serve some purpose, they seem weird and difficult only to uncivilized foreigners.

And you really can't rest your case if you haven't provided single evidence to back up your case.

You're providing all the evidence, ukkeli,

Incidentally, a more sensitive soul than myself might construe your tone as being rather agressive. There's no need to get all defensive.

You don't appear to have understood my point about the inflections, however.

I realise that they are important and useful parts of Finnish and that Finn's have no problem using them, no doubt to great stylistic effect in some contexts; you seem unable to understand that articles are equally simple and useful parts of English.

but, hey, i won't hold that against you.

btw, i raised the question over on the Brit English thread: F19585?thread=100569&latest=1

thought you might be interested

and another thought: As a non-native speaker, why do you think your analysis of English is 'more valid' than a native-speaking linguist?

Sorry if my style appeared hostile, it wasn't meant to be . Can't control tone of my English that well yet.

History of science is full of examples where person without "proper" education get breakthrough ideas. Like Wegener in case of Plate Tectonics, he was meteorologist and not geologist. Sometimes it just takes "outsider" to make people realize obvious facts. And of course I don't seriously think that my analysis of English is more valid than native speaker. (nor would I think that is any less valid)

Hi Ukkeli!

I think my students would love to read your article-free article!

I teach English to Finnish business people, and they hate learning articles, understandably.

In defence of articles, I would say that, as English has no partitive mood, we need to differnetiate between:

"Water is cold" (general statement, not true for all cases) and
"The water is cold" (this water we can see is cold. Specific statement)

And:

"A cat has walked into the kitchen" (someone else's cat- what's THAT doing here!?)
or
"The cat has walked into the kitchen" (the cat we know, ie ours)

If pressed I could think of a million more examples where articles aid undertsanding and so, in the same jovial spirit in which your entry was written, I oppose it!

Aha! Touché!

Hi,

if you wan't to tease your students with my article free article feel free. Just be aware that they migth see ligth and give up articles for good!

Actually both your water sentences translate into Finnish without partitive. Vesi on kylmää and that's it. Listener must figure out from context if speaker happens to refer to water in general or perhaps to certain swimming pool, he was telling about.

And that cat of yours. Well most of time it is your cat that walks into your kitchen, isn't it? And if it would be some strange cat you would probably put some more emphasis on it than simple `a`. You would use Strange/Unknown or some similar expression. So the and a serve no real purpose there.

And you must admit that most of time article free English sentences make perfect sense. Don't they? You just have to stop underestimating intelligence of your listeners by adding unnecessary articles. They can figure out from your previous or following sentence/-s if you talk about water in general or in some specific place, If you tell about cat that walked into your kitchen they presume that it is yours unless otherwise stated.

Touche? What did you hit?

This is a losing battle.

Finnish has obviously survived for ages without articles and Finns express themselves perfectly clearly, but at the same time all Indo-European languages have felt the need for articles for centuries if not longer.

What can I say?

You could say that you've seen ligth and you're going to join me in battle for better English?

Or you could say something about stubborn Finns?

Tough choise but its up to you.

easy choice.
I will never join forces with a language that has no future tense.

to you too. Who needs future tense when you can simply add words like tomorrow/next year to define time of action. I don't know how well you speak Finnish, but you probably noticed use of partitive to separate between action taken immediately and action to be done in some undefined future.

"Rakennan taloa" compared to "Rakennan talon". First means that person speaking is actually building house at that time and second one means that he will start building house at some undefined time in future.

Oh, you foreigners!! But I can understand your pain, Turku is not good place for human.

At least not right now.

And they all speak so STRANGELY here! No wonder I'm having trouble learning it!

Yeah, I actually speak much better Swedish than Finnish, but I'm trying to improve on both.

Actually some not so nice people define dialect in Turku area as hereditary speech defect.

Where are you from, anyway?

Current location is Kuopio, but originally from south-east Finland.