The Grammar of ‘Some’: The Partitive Article

If you’ve ever studied French or Italian, you’ve met the partitive article. It’s the grammar point that trips up English speakers right from the start. You learn that “bread” is pain in French, so you confidently ask the baker for “pain”, only to be corrected: you must ask for du pain. In Italy, you can’t just order “vino”; you need to ask for del vino.

This little word—du, de la, del, della—translates to “some”, but it feels so much more complicated. Why do you need it? Why can’t you just say the noun? And why do Spanish speakers get a free pass, happily ordering pan and vino without any extra grammatical baggage?

The story of the partitive article is a fascinating journey into the heart of how languages evolve. It’s a ghost of Latin, a clever grammatical invention, and a perfect example of how different languages find unique solutions to the same problem.

So, What Exactly Is a Partitive Article?

At its core, the partitive article is a grammatical tool used to refer to an unspecified quantity of an uncountable noun. Let’s break that down.

• Uncountable Noun: This is a “mass” noun, something you can’t typically count individually, like water, sand, money, courage, or information. You don’t say “one water, two waters”.
• Unspecified Quantity: You aren’t talking about all of it in the world, nor are you specifying an exact amount (like a liter or a kilo). You’re talking about “some” of it.

Think of it as the opposite of the definite article (the) and the indefinite article (a/an).

Let’s use French bread (le pain) as our guide:

• Definite Article: J’aime le pain. (I like the bread.) Here, you’re talking about bread in general, as a concept.
• Indefinite Article: Je voudrais un pain. (I would like a bread.) Here, you mean one specific, countable unit—a whole loaf.
• Partitive Article: Je voudrais du pain. (I would like some bread.) Here, you mean an unspecified portion of the larger mass of bread—a few slices, perhaps.

Mechanically, the partitive is formed by combining the preposition de (in French) or di (in Italian), which both mean “of”, with the definite article (le, la, l’ / il, lo, la).

• French: de + le = du (masculine), de + la = de la (feminine), de + l’ = de l’ (before a vowel)
• Italian: di + il = del (masculine), di + la = della (feminine), di + lo = dello (masc. special), di + l’ = dell’ (before a vowel)

So when a French person says they want du pain, they are, in a very literal, historical sense, saying they want “of the bread”.

A Journey Back to Latin: The Birth of ‘Of the’

To understand why this happened, we have to travel back to the Roman Empire. Classical Latin, the formal language of literature and oration, had a neat feature: it had no articles at all. No ‘the’, no ‘a’, no ‘some’.

If a Roman wanted to say “I am drinking wine”, they would simply say Vinum bibo. Context would tell you whether they meant “the wine” on the table or just “some wine” in general. For the Romans, this ambiguity was perfectly fine.

But language is a living thing, and the spoken language of the common people—Vulgar Latin—was always innovating. People sought more clarity. A new, more expressive construction began to emerge. To specify that you were taking just a part of a whole, you could use the preposition DE, which meant “from” or “of”.

So, instead of just Vinum bibo, a speaker might say Bibo de vino. This literally meant “I am drinking from the wine” or “of the wine”, clearly indicating a partial amount. This construction, known as a partitive genitive, was the seed from which the partitive article would grow.

The Great Divide: Why French and Italian Took a Different Path

As the Roman Empire faded and Vulgar Latin fractured into the early Romance languages, this DE + noun construction became increasingly popular in the regions that would become France and Italy (Gallo-Romance and Italo-Romance).

At the same time, another major change was happening: the birth of the definite article. The Latin demonstrative pronouns ILLE (that one, masculine) and ILLA (that one, feminine) began to weaken in meaning, eventually becoming the standard words for “the”—le and la in French, il and la in Italian.

In French and Italian, these two trends collided and merged.

The phrase bibo de vino (“I drink of wine”) was joined by the new definite article, becoming something like *bibo de illo vino* (“I drink of that wine”). Over centuries, this fused together. In French, de le vin contracted into the smooth, obligatory du vin. In Italian, di il vino became del vino.

This process is called grammaticalization: a sequence of words that starts as a descriptive phrase (a preposition + an article + a noun) becomes a fixed, mandatory grammatical unit (the partitive article). It was no longer a choice; it was the rule.

So Why Not Spanish?

This is where things get interesting. The languages of the Iberian Peninsula—what would become Spanish and Portuguese—also evolved from Vulgar Latin. They also developed definite articles from ILLE (el, la). So why didn’t they adopt the partitive?

The simple answer is: they just didn’t. Languages are not monoliths; regional dialects make different choices. The speakers in Iberia never fully embraced the DE + noun construction as the default way to express an unspecified quantity. They found the old Latin way—using a “zero article”—to be perfectly sufficient.

To say “I want bread” in Spanish, you just say Quiero pan. The idea of “some” is implied by the context. If you want to be more specific, you can use a phrase like un poco de pan (“a little bit of bread”), but this is a descriptive phrase, not a grammaticalized article.

Spanish chose economy. French and Italian chose specificity. Neither is better; they are simply different evolutionary paths.

More Than Just Food on a Plate

The partitive article isn’t just for ordering at a café. It applies to any abstract, uncountable concept, revealing its deep integration into the grammar.

• In French: Il faut du courage. (One needs [some] courage.)
• In French: J’ai de la chance. (I have [some] luck.)
• In Italian: Ci vuole della pazienza. (It takes [some] patience.)

The next time you stumble over du, de la, or del, don’t think of it as an annoying, arbitrary rule. Think of it as a grammatical fossil. It’s the preserved echo of a Roman trying to be a bit more specific, a linguistic innovation that caught on in Paris and Rome but was politely declined in Madrid. It’s a beautiful reminder that language is not just a set of rules, but a living history of human communication.