Re: articles

Skrivet gant # 1:

> When I design a new conlang I tend to use articles
>
> But, more I read grammars of other languages, more I realize that a
> lot of
> them don't have articles
>
> Is it something rare in languages?
>
> Are there only families of languages that use them?
>
> It tought it could be only the IE languages but arabic has "el" and
> basque
> has the suffix "-a"
>
> Had "el" and "-a" been borrowed from an IE language?
>
>
> I'd like to know if there are only some places in the worlds where
> languages
> possess articles and also if the majority does or doesn't use articles
>
> I searched and all languages I found wich have one or two articles are
> IE or
> are situated near of some IE languages
>
>
> Does someone know something about this?
>
> If I want my conlang to be natural and as much different of everything I
> know I should remove articles
>
>
> - Max
>
Well, many languages, including Indo-european languages (lavic excepted
Bulgarian, Latin, Hittite, Gaullish....) don't have articles, but it is
not restricted to IE. Hungarian has one (but this might be due to IE
influence), but also all polynesian languages, wolof, Somali and Masai..
There is also one in Swahili but one cannot exclude Arabic influence.

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