The, An, A

How do you say "a," "an," and "the" in Japanese is a common question by learners who already know English.

After all, those are the definite and indefinite articles, used everywhere in English grammar to determine the definiteness of nouns: "a" cat and "the" cat mean different things.

However, in Japanese, such articles do not exist. You read that right: Japanese does not have articles, at all.

• Definiteness of Nouns
• Sentence Examples

Definiteness of Nouns

In Japanese, the definiteness and plurality of a noun is implicit. That means you can't tell without context if a noun is singular or plural, or if it's definite or indefinite. A single Japanese noun can be translated in five different ways. For example:

• neko 猫
  Cat.
  A cat.
  The cat.
  Cats.
  The cats..

On the plus side, you don't have to figure out if you use "a" or "an" in a word in Japanese, because those things don't exist.

On the minus side, you can't tell if a word is plural, definite, or not, or neither.

The problem becomes even worse when you have two nouns, in which one is a no-adjective for the other. For example:

• neko no mimi
  猫の耳
  1. Cat's ear.
  2. A cat's ear.
  3. The cat's ear.
  4. Cats' ear.
  5. The cats' ear.
  6. Cat's ears.
  7. A cat's ears.
  8. The cat's ears.
  9. Cats' ears.
  10. The cats' ears.

Sentence Examples

To have a better idea, let's see a couple of examples of how nouns work in sentences.

• monsutaa ga arawareta
  モンスターが現れた
  [A/the] monster[/s] appeared.

The phrase above is common in RPGs, used when the player gets a random encounter with a monster.

Clearly, in that case, it should be "a monster" appeared. Since we didn't know of "the" monster until it appeared.

But the same phrase is also used if multiple monsters appear, in which case it would be "monsters appeared," or maybe "some monsters appeared."

• hito ga shinda
  人が死んだ
  (context reliant.)

The simple phrase above can have various interpretations depending on context. For example:

• If we were carrying out a world-domination plan that was meant to not cause harm to anybody, but then...
  • A person died.
• If we are a bunch of monsters who live in a monster-community like from the movie "Monster Child," Bakemono no Ko バケモノの子 (The Boy and The Beast), and there's, like, one human among us, we all know about him, but then...
  • The person died.
• If our world-domination plan failed much harder than previously thought.
  • People died.
• If we were talking about a kingdom where man and machine lived harmoniously, but then a virus killed all living beings, the inorganic machines survived, but:
  • The people died.

As you can see, it really depends on context.

Usually you won't really have trouble with this, so don't worry.