A, an and the pose challenges to people whose mother tongue is not English. This is because the words themselves have no meanings but can zoom in on a meaning depending on the way they are used.

Consider the two sentences here:

He is patient with irate customers.

He is a patient here.

A and an are called general determiners. They are also called the indefinite articles. Howsoever you may call them, you ought to know how they are used.

Before you begin to understand how they are used, you must know about count and uncount nouns. Noun, you know is a word that we use as a name. It can be the name of a person, place, an animal or a thing. Thing is a very general term; it includes many things such as an idea, a feeling or a state.

Names that represent things that can be counted are count nouns. Book, a book, two books, many books-the word book is a countable noun.

Water-one water (incorrect), many waters (incorrect). Water is an uncount noun. You see, you cannot count water.

A and an are used only with singular count nouns. You can say a book but not a water.

I know what you are going to ask me now. Where to use a and where to use an?

Well, grammar books tell you that you use an before nouns that begin with a, e, i, or u.

That is because those a, e, i, o and u are vowels. How come then we have a one day match? Should it not be an one day match?

You have to remember that a, e, i, o and u are not vowels but letters of the alphabet that represent the vowel sounds in English. There are twenty different vowels in English represented by a, e, i, o, and u. Sometimes, the letter y is also used as a vowel as in city, meaty and dirty.

The sound of one does not begin with a vowel sound; it has an initial consonant sound, the sound made by the letter w. Therefore a one day match.

Now, where do I use a and an.

A or an can mean one, the identity of which the listener does not know, or it does not matter. Give me a pen.

A pen means any pen, it doesn't matter which.

Give me the pen.

The pen means the pen that I had asked for or the pen which we wear referring to.

You can use a or an to speak about a member of a class or set.

If you say a policeman on beat should be alert, it means all policemen on beat should be alert.

Similarly, a teacher must understand the problems of a student, means all the teachers should understand the problems of students.

You can use a or an with the meaning per.

Wages at twenty dollars a day.

It is easy to understand how a or an is used. But what is difficult is to know whether a certain noun is count or uncount. For example, we do not say one information. Information is uncount. We do not say I have one news for you. News again, is uncount.

A good dictionary can help you understand whether a noun is count or uncount.

I know that I have not talked about the. I shall do it in my next post.

ganeshan ramachandran