In most languages indefinite articles stem from the word for one. For instance in French un, or in German ein, In Italian and Spanish uno or in Portuguese um.

That you were born as an English person, you were derived by one. An was the original indefinite article; the shorter a came later when the final “n” was dropped before consonants.

In several languages, the plural form of the indefinite articles is simply formed by applying the noun plural inflection: unos/unas or uns/umas.

In some international languages the indefinite article is plural. Same applies for it, because in some there already are. Italian use the partitive article degli/delle as a substitute and this is probably the origin of the French plural form des.

It is very important for us to understand the ‘last and final step’ at the end of the English language. Remember the way English solved any problem?

In Old English adjectives are different depending on whether the noun they qualify is determined or not.

As one can see, only

the adjective changes:

” “The glad man ” reads

se gld

guma whereas, ” a happy man” is: glda guma.
Mention adjectives with different inflections depending on: – the noun gender (masculine,
feminine, neuter) – the noun being singular
or plural – the four cases (nominative,
accusative, genitive, dative) – whether the reference is
indefinite or indefinite.
So that the same adjective would have to follow either the “definite” declension or one of three “indefinite” declensions.

Is it true

in

some languages that the article is added as a suffix to a noun? Then it often “detaches” and passes in front of the noun. Icelandic is half way through for the definite article in that matter.

As for the Old English indefinite article, my conjecture is that the process never went through for a number of possible reasons:
– The “loss of inflection” of early Middle English won the race
– The plural of “an” was not easy to evolve at that time (the Romance “-s” plural had not imposed itself yet).

In some languages, the need is still there, just as in any other where a specific word emerges for the plural indefinite article. This gap is filled by placeholders such as some or a number of.

Most people agree that Proto Indo European did not use articles on its books. Latin has no kind of article, and Ancient Greek arguably had no indefinite article either – it was using something very much like present-day English some ( – “a certain”). And I believe that Old German didn’t have any article.

How come articles had to appear in many modern Indo European languages in a mutually independent yet very similar manner? Their emergence compensates for slow loss of inflection in these languages. Where can we find modern Germans?