As is well known, children often ask adults difficult questions. One I've been asked more than once is: Who was the first person to speak? Or a variation of it: How did people begin to speak? It's a question that has intrigued humanity for millennia.

There are few things more universal than speech. Where there are humans, there is language. Whether in the desert, the Arctic, or a city of millions, children begin to speak without anyone explicitly teaching them how. They don't consult manuals, they aren't given lessons, and yet, in just a few years, a child masters a language with all its complexities: they make agreement, conjugate verbs, understand nuances, create sentences they've never heard before, and even correct adults. How is this possible?

Have you ever stopped to think about how often we say 'el', 'la', 'uno', 'sa', and 'se'? Or how natural it feels to place them before almost any noun, without thinking? Articles are part of the everyday landscape of the Catalan language, whether we speak or write. Now, what if I told you that there are many languages that don't have any and yet are equally precise and expressive?