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

I would like to be "Keeper of Article Free English"

This nomination would give more credibility for my campaign to remove unnecessary articles from English language.

Ukkeli

The title of Keeper of Article Free English is hereby awarded to Ukkeli.


Congratulations!

Thank you very many!

Don't think i haven't got my eye on you!

I should have asked this earlier but how come only British article is great? Why not English articles in wider sense? You're not standing for American/Australian/South African articles? And if not then who is? Or are those poor creatures left all alone against attacks of evil Fenno?

And what article are you actually standing for? A, An or The? Shouldn't it be Great British Articles?

It's a catch-phrase in the UK - 'The Great British Banger', for instance. I'm not 'claiming' them as uniquely British.

And on the '*the* Great British Article (sing)' - this is actually an interesting usage of the definite article in English. When talking about a whole group of things under the same umbrella term, we use a definite article plus singular noun.

In 'the Great British Banger', i'm talking about all UK sausages.

In 'the noun in English grammar' - it is clear that this refers to all nouns.

now, come on, hit me with 'Nouns in Eng grammar' suits you better!

I can see your point about this issue, but what i don't think you realise is that when you learn English as a native-speaker, it is not just 'natural' to use articles all over the place, it is easy and useful. It may not be necessary, or eternal, but in modern Standard English, that is how it is.

When i tried to draw an analogy with the more complex inflection of Finnish verbs, you simply defended Finnish verbs. I was never suggesting changing Finnish (it would be ridiculous for me to do so); but i'm not convinced that you see the native-speaker's side of this article issue.

and just in case all that sounds a bit serious, , i hope you've worked out by now that i'm only discussing it with you coz i find it very interesting and fun.

cya
spiff

I very well can see your point as native-speaker, but languages can and do change. Structures in Finnish that were 20 years ago (me in primary school) considered as fatal errors appear today on pages of even more respectable newspapers. All of these new structures have replaced more complex and longer ones, thus shortening texts. At least we Finns try to avoid exces work, if something can be done as well but somehow easier well do it that way. "You have to be fool to work too hard" as saying goes in here.

And going back to Finnish verbs, endings are slowly fading away. If you read Finnish novels from 1800s you'll see lot of endings and forms that are no longer considered as part of everyday modern Finnish. French have also some verb forms no longer used, can't remember their name in even in Finnish.

I admit that in some (very rare ) cases your articles serve some purpose, but then why not use them only when they are really needed? Why for example superlatives have the allways in front of them? Isn't it clear that if something is smallest/largest/fastest/etc. that it must be "the" thing?

And yes, I'm not taking all this too seriously I take all this about as seriously as all the five parts of the trilogy. So now I'll leave you to figure out what that actually means and to get

Howdja say in Finnish then? And i bet it's really a !

cya
spiff

Kippis!

And it really was only a and an