Articles
Articles are used before nouns and act as an adjective. There are two types of articles: definite and indefinite.
The is a definite article and is used for specific things.
A and an are indefinite articles used for things that are not specified.
Now we will look further into the uses of articles.
The English alphabet contains both vowel and consonant sounds; a,e, i,o, and, u are vowels, and the remaining alphabets are consonants.
We use an with vowel sounds and a with consonant sounds, but wait, before moving forward, let’s look into one example that might be confusing. Here it is a university or an university. Which one is correct?
The first one is the correct one, but why is a university correct? We mentioned above that with vowel sounds we use an, yes, and we are exactly right because when you pronounce the word university, the first letter does not sound vowel but consonant. We will focus on sounds, not alphabets.
A word could start with U, but it could sound both vowel and consonant depending on the pronunciation, for example.
An umbrella
A university
In the above examples, U in umbrella sounds like a vowel, and U in university is a consonant sound; therefore, an is used with umbrella and a with university. Below are some more examples.
A unit
A university
A unique
A usage
Though the above words start with the vowel letter u but sound consonant, creating the /you/ sound, we use a instead of an.
An umbrella
An hour
In the above examples, the first letter of both words sounds a vowel creating the sounds /um/ and /avar/, as h is silent in an hour, so we use an.
Another example is a mango and an M.A.
The first letter of both words is m, which is a consonant, but m in mango sounds consonant /Ma/ and m in M.A sounds like a vowel /am-a/.
The is used for specific things. For example, if you want any book, you would say give me a book, but if you want a specific book, you would say Give me the book.
A and an are used only with singular and countable nouns, for example.
1:An elephant
2:A teacher
3:A car
4:An anger
5:A water
6:A beauty
The first three examples are correct; the remaining three are incorrect because water, beauty, and anger are uncountable nouns, and we read that a and an are used with countable nouns.
The is used both with singular and plural as well as with countable and uncountable nouns.
When a person or thing is unknown to a listener, we use a or an, but we use the when a person or thing is known, for example.
Michael has two pajamas, green and blue. The blue is old, but the green is new.
We use a and an when talking about the profession, category, and type of someone or something, for example.
Ali is a doctor.
He is a scientist.
When not to use articles, but there are a few exceptions as well, but we will look broadly into areas where we don’t use articles.
We don’t use articles with the names of people.
Articles are also not used with the names of countries and cities.
Articles are not used with languages and sports.
Articles are not used with streets, locations, and places.
We don’t use articles with university names, but if the university, name starts with the word University for example
University of Balochistan, then we use the University of Balochistan.
It’s time for a quiz. Let’s try a quiz here to learn simply and easily.
