Robin Turner wrote:
>All too true.  I've spent ages trying to teach articles to Turkish
>students and
>they _never_ get it entirely - the best you can hope for is maybe a 50%
>improvement in accuracy.  Not surprising - apparently Bertrand Russell wrote a
>whole book on the definite article.
 
I have similar experiences with persons learning Swedish with a background
of a language without articles. But the fact that you have articles in your
own language does not necessary imply that you can use the article
correctly in English.
 
When in school we learnt a lot of cases where Swedish has articles and
English doesn't. A couple of examples just for your reading entertainment:
I think there is a problem with the Sun, Moon and Earth. But writing this I
am not sure: We use articles with seasons, _The spring is late this year
(we say _"toyear"_ as in _today_.
 
I thing he will be home to Christmas. The Christmas is a nice time. The
time goes on. The modern society is much more complicated.
 
The history will show us if it was a good decision or not.
 
She has put the monies in the pockets. He shooke the head (meaning _his*_
head).
 
(When computer and other manuals are translated into Swedish, the
translaters who certainly are Swedish themselves, often keep the possessive
pronouns (you call them adjectives, don't you?) and this looks strange, at
least to me.)
 
I have a terrible ache in the tooth.
 
I bought Times and Observer to read on my passage by Queen Mary over The
Atlantic. (Article with newspapers and ships if I recall correctly).
 
Speaking about articles with given names, this is used in some dialects in
the nothern part of Sweden but generally not in Standard Swedish.
 
Hoping this may interest some of you!
 
 
 
 
Another hard point in Western languages - if you don't have them in your
own languages - is tences. And for me aspects in Slavic languages is hard,
not to understand the principle of, but getting the convention for usage.
 
Paul wrote:
>    I once had a book (which I regrettably no longer have) on symbolic
>logic which elaborated on a theory of the definite article from a
>symbolic logician's point of view.  Many historically significant
>languages, such as Latin and Russian, have done just fine, thank you,
>without articles, and I personally recommend that an auxlang do without
>them.  (At least Esperanto and Ido have only one, although I do not
>know whether there have been systematic expositions of its "proper"
>use.)
 
When I began learning Finnish quite a few years ago I found it very
difficult to understand the rules for the use of the partitive case and I
asked a collegue of mine who is bilingual Finnish and Swedish, and she
explained to me that I could use the accusative case (or nominative) in
Finnish if there was an article in Swedish, but if there was none ore an
indefinite one I should use the partitive case.
 
As for articles in Russian you can show the definite and undefinite
cathegory by word order. There are two Slavic language using articles, that
I know of, and that is Bulgarian and Macedonian.
 
A trick I once suggested for persons learning Swedish was to put a
demonstrative pronoun where they thought there might be an article. If that
did not fit, they should not put an article there, but if it kinda worked
they could substitute the demonstrative adjective with a definite article.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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