Intro to articles | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

grammarians I would like to tell you a
tale of two elephants in order to get it
the idea of this thing called the
article and we'll explain what that is
after I tell you about the elephant and
an elephant now articles are words like
a or an or thee and articles are a kind
of adjectives some people would call
them a determiner that help you figure
out how important something is or how
specific something is so articles what
articles do is they tell you whether or
not something is specific you know are
you thinking about any old elephant when
you talk about an elephant or you talk
thinking about one elephant in
particular the elephant and this is the
difference you know when we're talking
about VL or thinking about a specific
elephant we have a particular one in
mind that this is what's called the
definite because it defines what we're
talking about you know this elephant
could be the queen of the elephants and
sometimes when we make sentences we want
to aim for that kind of precision we
want to be precise we want to know
exactly what we're talking about and who
we're talking about and why and that's a
case where you use the word thee or the
now if you're not being specific if
you're talking about any old elephant an
elephant that you're not especially
familiar with an element an elephant you
haven't introduced before that would be
you would say an elephant because it's
not specific and it's undefined so
grammarians call that an indefinite
article when you know who and what you
are talking about for sure you say Z or
them and when you're not sure you say a
or an so if you knew that you were
talking about a specific elephant say
for example the
queen of the elephants the queen as
indicated by her royal crown you would
say Z and if you were talking about any
ole elephant you'd say and you'd use the
indefinite article we'll cover this more
later I just wanted to give you an
introduction to the idea of what an
article is so the four specific a or an
for nonspecific you can learn anything
David out