How do you say the in Chinese?

Answer 1

Chinese, like many other languages, does not use definite articles, thus there is no need for the word "the" and it cannot be literally translated from languages like English that make great use of the definite article "the". Russian and other Slavic languages, as well as dead languages like Latin, lack articles equivalent to the word "the" as well. In the case of the Romance Languages, articles developed from the Latin words for "this" and "that" (for example "illa", which became "la" in many modern Romance languages). A similar occurrence has happened in Slavic languages where the Slavonic word for "this" now functions as an article (for example "ta" = "this" now appears at the end of words with a function of an article in Bulgarian ("академията" (akademiata) = "academy the")