Kazunari Hirano wrote:
Hi Charles, Greg and Ian,
Thank you very much.
:)
Japanese language doesn't have the articles you have.
I knew the official name of the US:
The United States of America.
But I didn't know the official name of the UK:
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
It's long ;)
Ian-san, I think you explain it better than any linguist.
"the" appears first to show its a single entity
I see now. I see why "the" is called "definite article."
"the" defines something. It points to a specific thing. It makes the
thing very clear.
Thank you again.
khirano
Japanese has no definate article? Wow. Languages are very interesting. I
mentioned this to my daughter's friend who, is an exchange student from
Sweden about this. She said Swedish doesn't have a definate article
either, but that the word ending changes. Is that similar to Japanese?
The three of us then decied that thinking about grammar rules made our
heads hurt, so we went back to discussing how strange the U.S. is. ;-)
-Greg
