1111: The Creation of Indefinite Articles (in some languages) Dec 24, 2017

Latin didn't have indefinite articles, like 'a' or 'an' in English, and it didn't really have definite articles either. Latin did have demonstrative pronouns (which could also function as deictic pronouns) such as 'ille, illa, illud' (masculine, feminine, neuter (m, f, n)) meaning 'that' which became 'il' and 'la' (m and f) in French, as well as other similar definite articles in other Romance languages, because the function of those pronouns is similar to articles. However, French and other Romance languages also have indefinite articles now, such as 'un, une' (m, f), but these don't come from pronouns. Instead, they come from 'unus, una' (m, f) meaning the cardinal number 'one'. This occurrence is not only restricted to the Romance languages either; Old English didn't have indefinite articles either, and the word instead comes from 'ān' which meant 'one'. It is fairly logical that this should happen with articles, since "that [noun]" and "one [noun]" have nearly identical meanings to "the [noun]" and "a(n) [noun]", but allow people to convey even more meaning. As a side-note, 'an' is more similar to the Old English number 'one' in pronunciation, even though it has a different meaning, but the use of [w] in the beginning of 'one' [wʌn] was only really considered standard in English in the late 17th century.
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