Like most of the Slavic languages many of the Indo-Aryan languages have not embraced the use of articles. Bengali alone overtly marks definiteness in nouns, but even this is often optional. The other languages of this family either use a numeral meaning “one” to indicate indefiniteness but generally do not mark the noun at all. For the most part, definiteness or indefiniteness is understood through context.
What’s the use?
The main function of articles is to indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite. Most Indo-Aryan languages accomplish this task without the use of specific articles. Instead, they rely on context (the noun has already been mentioned, or is the understood topic of discourse.) However, these Indo-Aryan languages part company with the Slavic languages which also use context to determine determinacy in that word order remains fixed SOV in Indo-Arayn, whereas in Slavic, for example, an indefinite subject is often found at the end of a sentence giving OVS.
Nothing or ‘one’.
Speakers of most of the Indo-Aryan languages express in/definiteness of nouns via context, i.e. without any overt article. However, they all may use the numeral for ‘one‘ to indicate something specific but as yet not identified. Thus [one girl bought the book.] refers to ‘a girl’ (that I know about because I was here and I saw her buy it). Without the use of ‘one’ the sentence becomes ‘Some girl bought the book.’ In the following ‘the book’ is understood from previous context.
Punjabi ikk kuṛī ne kitāb kharīdī. [one girl ERG book bought] ‘A girl bought the book.’
Sindhi hika chokirī’a kitābu kharīdu kayo. [one girl+ERG book bought did] Nepali euṭī keṭīle kitāb kinī. [one girl book bought]
Outsider on the inside.
As with the other Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali speakers express definiteness through word order and context. However, Bengali has no use for ergativity, and fully (morphologically) embraces the explicit expression of definiteness, making it unique among the modern Indo-Aryan languages.
In Bengali, indefinite nouns either have no article: meẏe1 ‘a girl’ or the word ekta ‘a (certain) is used: ekṭā meẏe ‘a (certain) girl’. Definite nouns are produced by attaching the classifier –tā, which carries the meaning ‘a discrete single item’, to nouns: meẏeṭā ‘the girl’.
Bengali ekṭā meẏe boiṭā kinlo. ‘a (certain) girl book+the bought’
1From Sanskrit mātṛkā ‘little mother’
Taking possession.
The Indo-Aryan languages (Bengali excepted) do not distinguish between possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns (e.g., my = mine). One word works for both; if before a noun it functions as a possessive adjective. If alone it functions as a possessive pronoun. Here, as above, Bengali is unique in marking definiteness by attaching the definite article –ṭā to the possessive adjective.
Gujurati e māruṃ pustak che. [that my book is] ‘That is my book.’ tamāruṃ ṭebal par che. [your table on is] ‘Yours is on the table.’
Bengali oṭā āmār boi. [that+the my book]
tomārṭā ṭebiler opor. [your+the of+the table on]
One reddit user asked if it’s “weird” for speakers of a language with articles to speak a language without articles. Another user responded, “At first, it feels like you’re speaking ‘caveman-speak.’ After a while it’s not really noticeable. That’s when you start accidentally dropping articles in English…”. Another said, “It feels super weird. Hindi doesn’t use articles (though it does mark definiteness in other ways), and I always feel like something’s missing. I tend to overuse “ek” (one) because I feel like there needs to be an indefinite article before nouns. It sounds increibly weird to say “Kitaab mil gayi” (I found a book) without inserting something as the article. I’ll often say “Ek kitaab mil gayi” (I found one book) but I’ve been corrected for that many times.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/8cotqo/how_weird_is_it_to_learn_an_articleless_language/
GRAMMAR
Classifiers are suffixes, or separate words, that are added to a noun that indicate the category of what the noun refers to; categories like ‘number’, ‘human’, ‘definite’, ‘inanimate’. Classifiers do not specify grammatical relations, i.e. they are not case endings. Classifiers are not unusual in non Indo-European languages but among the Indo-European languages are found only in eastern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Bengali and Assamese.
ERG is an abbreviation for ‘ergative marker’, which indicates that the logical subject of the action is not the agent of the action. See Ergativity.