An article (abbreviated to ART) is a word (prefix or suffix) that is used alongside a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and (in certain contexts) some. "An" and "a" are modern forms of the Old English "an", which in Anglian dialects was the number "one" (compare "on", in Saxon dialects) and survived into Modern Scots as the number "owan". Both "on" (respelled "one" by the Normans) and "an" survived into Modern English, with "one" used as the number and "an" ("a", before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefinite article. In many languages, articles are a special part of speech, which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech. In English, articles are frequently considered a part of a broader speech category called determiners, which combines articles and demonstratives (such as "this" and "that"). In languages that employ articles, every common noun,