Articles are adjectives?

[nq:1]Why are articles considered adjectives?[/nq]
Are they? Who says?
[nq:1]They do not describe the property or condition of a subject, noun, or object. If they weren't grammatically significant I would think they are interjections.[/nq]
It's perfectly possible to live without articles - ask any Russian.

David
==

[nq:1]Why are articles considered adjectives? They do not describe the property or condition of a subject, noun, or object. If they weren't grammatically significant I would think they are interjections.[/nq]
They are not considered adjectives, except by the ignorant. You've been reading (or being taught by someone who's read) the wrong books.

It used to be thought that there w

[nq:1]Not everything they tell you in school is true, I'm sorry to say.[/nq]
I bet you tell that to your students, too. But what if you're wrong...?

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My grammar book says that "articles usually function as adjectives". It doesn't specifically say they are adjectives. What part of speech do you consider them to be?

Thus spake Adam Entous:
[nq:2]Are they? Who says? It's perfectly possible to live without articles - ask any Russian.[/nq]
[nq:1]My grammar book says that "articles usually function as adjectives". It doesn't specifically say they are adjectives. What part of speech do you consider them to be?[/nq]
Determiners (a word class that includes certain pronouns, too).

Next!

[nq:1]My grammar book says that "articles usually function as adjectives". It doesn't specifically say they are adjectives. What part of speech do you consider them to be?[/nq]
They are determiners.

Martin Ambuhl

[nq:1]In particular, articles belong to the category of Determiner, which also includes quantifiers, like "some", "all", "every", "ten", etc., and which has its own little niche at the beginning of the English noun phrase, before all the adjectives.[/nq]
"Ten"? Cardinal numbers seem more like adjectives than like determiners to me. "The ten commandments", "these ten items", and so on.

Very thorough answer. Thanks! My grammar book isn't very detailed. I think it was written for elementary students. Since I knew next to nothing about grammar (I had only heard of maybe four of the eight parts of speech) I decided to go with a basic book. I had one grammar class sometime before junior high. After that it wasn't covered much. The only reason I spell right is because I manually corre

[nq:2]Are they? Who says? It's perfectly possible to live without articles - ask any Russian.[/nq]
[nq:1]My grammar book says that "articles usually function as adjectives". It doesn't specifically say they are adjectives. What part of speech do you consider them to be?[/nq]
It seems to have been determined that they are determiners.

David
==

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[nq:1]Here's how it begins (it's in Latin, naturally; all writing, reading and education in Europe was in Latin for about the first 1500 years of the Common Era):...[/nq]
Thanks for an interesting response! However...
Should that "all" be "most" or should it be "a lot of"? I'm sure considerable reading, writing, and education went on in Europe in Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. Maybe in