In English there are three articles:  a, an, and the.  Articles are used before nouns or noun equivalents and are a type of adjective.  The definite article (the) is used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader.  The indefinite article (a, an) is used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known.  There are certain situations in which a noun takes no article. http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/articles.html

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including:  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (incl. Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili) and Yoruba.  In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.  Find information on proper, partitive, negative, and zero articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar) 

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world.  He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such.  The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.  Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.  Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States on Broadway by actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.  The show ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until it was surpassed in 1881 by Hazel Kirke.  As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular culture, particularly English author Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described as an egg.  The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.  Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics.  The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder".  The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder.  See graphics including musical notation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty  See also https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/humpty-dumpty/

Pepin the Short, also called the Younger (c. 714–768) was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768.  He was the first Carolingian to become king.  Pepin was succeeded by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman.  Although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his time, Pepin's reign is largely overshadowed by that of his more famous son, Charlemagne.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepin_the_Short

 

“The French do not go insane unless there is some advantage in it.”  “Pippin IV, an uncomfortable bundle of purple velvet and ermine, with the queen, equally befurred, sitting beside him, acknowledged the cheers of the loyal bystanders and responded with equal courtesy to hisses.”  “The first function of business is to create the demand and the second to fulfill it.”  The Short Reign of Pippin IV, a fabrication by John Steinbeck 

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902–1968) was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception."  He has been called "a giant of American letters."  During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories.  He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937).  The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon.  In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck  

Thomas Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016) was a screenwriter, photographer, and journalist.  He published numerous works of fiction, including short stories and novels.  He was the elder son of American novelist John Steinbeck.  John Ernst Steinbeck IV (1946–1991) was an American journalist and author.  He was the second child of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Ernst Steinbeck.  He worked as a journalist for Armed Forces Radio and TV and as a war correspondent for the United States Department of Defense.  Wikipedia 

JANUARY EVENTS 

Virginia Woolf buys a house in Bloomsbury (January 9, 1924) • Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” is published (January 10, 1776) • Intrepid Belgian boy reporter Tintin makes his first appearance in a serialization of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets in the children’s newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième (January 10, 1929) • Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba, which was completed just before his assassination in 1936 (which he predicted in a poem), is performed for the first time in Spain (January 10, 1964) • Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (January 11, 1978) • Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint is published (January 12, 1969) • Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is published under the name Victoria Lucas (January 14, 1963) • Victor Hugo finishes writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame (January 15, 1831)  Literary Hub  January 9, 2022 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2480  January 10, 2022