When to use "A" or "AN" in a sentence... and when NOT to! (Indefinite Articles)

Hi, everyone. In this lesson we're going to look at when to us "a" or "an".

In these sentences if we remove "a" sometimes the sentence is grammatically incorrect

or it sounds wrong,

or sometimes the sentence is still correct but it changes the meaning. So this lesson

is about when we need to use "a" or "an" in the sentence instead of "the" or not having

it all so that we get the correct meaning. Let's start with...

These are different grammar rules for when to use "a" or "an".

Let's start with when something is unspecified or known. Here are some examples, when I say:

"He has a cat.", or I say: "I'm going to buy a tent.", or I say: "Do you want a beer?"

these are all examples of something unspecified. I know he has a cat, but I don't know this

cat personally, so I just say: "a cat". When I say: "He has the cat", I mean that one and

you know the one I'm talking about. He has the cat. When I say:

"I'm going to buy the tent", the meaning is different because that sentence,

"the tent", "I'm going to buy the tent" is as if I've already decided it

and talked about, and chosen the tent before.

Not a tent. I'll go to the shop, I'll look at them, I'll buy that one.

So this one is unspecified and this one is known. For anybody who doesn't know what the word "tent" is,

we use a tent when we go camping and we sleep outside. We zip open the tent, we sleep inside

there. And the last example, again: "Do you want a beer?" I mean a beer in general, one

of these here, here you go. When I say: "Do you want the beer?" there's only one beer

there, last one.

Moving on, one of something. "I'll have a glass of red wine." That means one. Perhaps

you'd say that when you're ordering at a bar: "I'll have a glass of red wine, please." Number

two here: "He has a daughter." Means the same as he has one daughter. And the next example:

"I've got two apples and an orange." In this sentence we have the number two for two apples,

but we only mean one orange, so we say "an orange".

I can also say: "I've got two apples and one orange",

but this sentence makes sense as well. If you're wondering: "Why is it 'an'

here and not 'a'", go and check out Gill's lesson on when to use "a" or "an".

So pause this video and come back after.

Moving on, looking at jobs now, we say: "She's a teacher.",

"Mr. Smith is a police officer.",

and we say: "Rachel is a nurse." These sentences are wrong if I remove the "a".

"She's teacher", wrong. "Mr. Smith is police officer", wrong.

And: "Rachel is nurse", wrong.

Depends on your native language, but if you don't use articles... For example, in the Polish language

or Arabic, many people speaking English, especially at intermediate level do not use "a" in their

sentences. So it's a very common mistake to say something like:

"She's teacher." And see if you can hear me saying "a", because if you're not used to those articles you might

not even hear it. So listen carefully again this time: "She's a teacher.

" "a" becomes "e": "She's e teacher.", "Mr. Smith is a police officer.", "e". "Rachel is a nurse."

So I say it really quickly. So you might not hear it so easily when I'm saying it, but if you

don't say it... If you say: "Rachel is nurse", I can hear that every time, so remember that.

Number four, religions or ideologies. We say: "He's a Christian.", "They are Hindus." A

quick note here about these capital letters: Because these religions are names, we use

a capital letter there. "Karl Marx was a communist.", and "Margaret Thatcher was a conservative."

Moving on to number five which is social movements or trends. When we're describing that someone

belongs to a group in this way or follows a particular trend, that's when we use "a".

"He's a biker." means the same thing as: "He's a Hell's Angel." These are the people that

ride the Harley Davidson motorbikes, they wear all leather clothes, beards, and bandanas,

and ride around on their bikes in a motorcycle gang.

We don't say: "He's the biker", or:

"He's the Hell's Angel", because that changes the meaning of the sentence.

If I say: "He's the biker", it would be in a situation where somebody said: "Where's the biker? Where is he here?"

And I say: "He's the biker." It's a different meaning to describing what this...

How to identify this man, the group he's in, or... So we can understand his interest better.

Another example: "I'm a hipster." I'm not talking about myself, here, even though I'm

using "I'm". Something I've noticed is that people who are hipsters never admit to being

hipsters. And also we don't have so many hipsters in London as in parts of Canada and parts of the USA.

And for anybody who doesn't know what hipsters are, the first thing that comes

to mind is a man with a beard or a curling stache, perhaps all tattoos on his arms, wearing

really, really tight trousers. But you do get... You do get women hipsters as well.

So they're fashion... They're fashionable and they like the clothes that other people

wouldn't wear I suppose or old-fashioned things that other people wouldn't wear. Another example

here: "She's an environmentalist.", "Sarah is a vegan."

Because she's a vegan she doesn't eat cheese, she doesn't eat anything that was made from an animal.

And last example is: "Felix is a gamer."

Felix is PewDiePie on YouTube, so we can also say:

"PewDiePie is a gamer." Next we've got more examples.

Next use is nouns about a person. Look at this sentence: "Henry is an orphan." In this

sentence "orphan" is the noun, so we have "an" before.

The next sentence: "He's a psychopath.", "psychopath" is the noun.

Before the noun we have "a". Psychopath can be the kind of

crazy person who goes around stabbing people with a knife, can also be the kind of person

who doesn't care to lie, cheat, do anything... They have no morals. They'll do anything to

get what they want. When we change this sentence to the adjective form of this word to psychopathic,

we can say: "He's psychopathic", and when we do that we don't need "a", but if we're

using the noun we need to have "a" or "an". "He's a psychopath."

Another example: "She's an idiot." If we change "idiot" to the adjective form,

"idiotic", again, we don't need "an".

We can say: "She's idiotic." But because we're using the noun we say: "She's an idiot." And

the last example: Louise is a drunk." means that when... When we say somebody is a drunk,

every day they're drinking, and could be they wake up at half past 10 in the morning and

the first thing they do is have some alcohol drink. So when we say someone is a drunk,

here "drunk" is a noun, this is a different, very different meaning to saying... To saying:

"She's drunk", or saying: "Louise is drunk." That sentence means now she's drunk, but she's

not doing it all the time and in the morning.

Let's move on to number seven which is about nationalities. When a nationality is singular

we can use "a" or "an". "Marco is an Italian." We can also say: "He's Italian.",

"I'm an English woman." It's not wrong to say: "I'm English."

And we can say: "He's a Turk."

Do people use the word "Turk"? "Turk" is not considered the most standard, proper way to

describe the Turkish nationality, but it's used informally much in the same way that

an Irish person might be described as a Paddy, you might hear this said about Turkish, that

somebody is a Turk. So we can change this sentence: "He's a Turk" to: "He's Turkish."

What's the difference between the two examples? In the first example here where we're using

"an", "Marco is an Italian", it's like he's one of all the Italians. And if we say:

"He's Italian", of course it still describes his nationality and where he's from, and they're...

Both of them are correct. They don't have very, very different meanings, but a very

subtle difference in the sense that this one means one of a bigger group, and this one

includes the whole group together. Subtle difference.

Number eight, day of the week in general. Now, these sentences here, we... We're not

using them all the time. You need to find a specific thing that's happening so that

you can make this kind of sentence. First sentence is:

"Christmas is on (a) Monday this year."

I said it so quickly maybe you didn't even hear the word "a".

"Christmas is on a Monday this year."

Grammatically I can also remove "a" if I want, the two versions are

correct. I'll read it one more time because it was really fast:

"Christmas is on a Monday this year." What this sentence means

is Christmas is one day of the year, it's always on the

25th of December, but Christmas is always changing what day of the week it's on; sometimes

it's Monday, sometimes it's Wednesday, sometimes it's Saturday. So that's the kind of statement

that people would make about Christmas because it's an important day that people celebrate,

but because the day is almost always changing they might not know what day it will be on

this year. And some days when... When Christmas is on a Monday, for example, this can mean

that more people get time off work than normally, so that's why this sort of statement may be

said sometimes, why someone cares what day Christmas is on.

Another example: "The inauguration is always on (a) Friday."

This is when a new president becomes sworn in to become... To

become the president. And we would say this example sentence because there's a tradition

of this event, an inauguration always happening on the same... Same day of the week, and this

statement might be said because you don't know it will always happen on a Friday.

Number nine, we use "a" or "an" before an adjective in a description.

"Julia has a beautiful smile.", "The boy has a bad temper.",

"The cat has an expensive collar." In these sentences

the adjective: "beautiful", "bad", and "expensive", the "a" or "an" goes before the adjective.

And to decide: Is it an "a" or an "an"? Well, it depends... How you decide is the sound...

The first... The first sound in the adjective.

Number 10, exclamations "What" and "Such". I can say: "What a mess! What have you done?

There's plates all over the place. You've had a party I can see. What a mess!"

I can say: "What a joke! What a joke!" that has a kind of opposite meaning. If I say something...

If I say: "What a joke!" I don't mean funny in the "hahahahaha" way, like, good funny,

I mean: "I can't believe that. I don't like that. I can't believe that." Or I could say:

"What a surprise! So happy to see you." All of these exclamations using "What" need "a".

I can also change the sentence to keep a similar meaning using: "It was such a...",

"I went in the house and it was such a mess." I can also say:

"I can't believe what happened. It was such a joke."

And I can also say:

"It was such a surprise when I went home and everybody was there with balloons and cake for me on my birthday."

They mean very similar, but

different grammar constructions to say the same thing. And the two of them need to have "a".

Number 11, our last example is when two singular nouns are in a pair. When I'm eating I say:

"A knife and fork." I don't say: "A..." I don't say... I don't say: "A knife and a fork."

I don't say two a's because the singular nouns become a pair. I just say: "A knife and fork."

This is not wrong, but you will not hear... You generally wouldn't hear a native speaker

saying it that way: "A knife and a fork." I can think of an exception. Perhaps you really,

really were insistent that you need the two things, you need... You need a knife and a fork,

then it would be correct. But just in general most of the times when we say it,

it will sound like: "A knife and fork." Now, listen carefully to that as well because I

say it so quickly that you don't even hear the word "and", you just hear "n".

"A knife n fork." Another example here:

"A needle... A needle and thread. A needle and thread."

The "and"... The "and" disappears and just becomes an "n".

And the last example: "A bow and arrow."

So, thank you, everyone, for watching. What you can do now is do the quiz on this lesson.

I'll see you soon. Bye.