| 3.1.1.5 Definite articles vs. partitive article |
We now will compare definite articles with partitive articles to give you a better feeling for the differences.
Have a look at the following sentences.
| Example | ||
 |
J' aime le vin. | definite article |
|
Je veux boire du vin. | partitive article |
Having a closer look at them:
| Example | ||||
| J' | aime | le | vin. | |
| I | like | --- | wine. | |
| Je | veux | boire | du | vin. |
| I | would like to | drink | (some) | wine. |
Once the definite article was used, once the partitive article. In English both times no article would be used. Coming back to the definition as in here, partitive articles are used when 'some' can be used, because here it is about only part of a unity and not about the unity itself.
| Other examples | |||||||||||
|
Le | café | est | très | important | pour | l' | économie | de | l' | Amérique du Sud |
| The | coffee | is | very | important | for | the | economy | of | South America. | ||
|
La | Colombie | exporte | du (de + le) | café | ||||||
| Colombia | exports | (some) | coffee. | ||||||||
Again we can see that the first sentence regards coffee as a unity, all of coffee is important in South America. And some of it (just a part) is exported by Colombia.
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