We do the opposite. If something is known we just say it.

“The girl(1) is playing(2) violin(3) downstairs(4)”

دختر(۱) در طبقه‌ی پایین(۴) ویالن(۳) مینوازد(۲)

To refer to an unknown thing we add a prefix ی to the thing

A girl -> دختری
The girl -> دختر

Don’t know about Farsi, but in Russian you would have to declare your knowledge and specificity of the subject. You can transmit some of that information by changing word emphasis, but it’s not very clear.

As for your sentences I would translate them as:

1. The girl downstairs was playing violin → Девушка [girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
2. A girl downstairs was playing violin - Внизу [downstairs] девушка [girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].

The first one puts more emphasis on the “girl”. The second one puts more emphasis on “downstairs”, almost suggesting that the identity of the girl doesn’t matter, kinda “some girl who happened to be downstairs”. But it is not as explicit as a definite/indefinite article for sure.

If you want to make it certain that the identity of the girl doesn’t matter, you could use an adjective to that extent: Внизу [downstairs] какая-то девушка [some girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].

If you want to make it certain that both you and the person you’re talking to know about the girl, you can use a determiner: Та девушка [that girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].

I guess the is implied, count is explicit. A thing becomes one thing and the thing becomes thing.

Oh man this is me with “exercise” and “exorcise.”

In Anglophone school, We were taught as children “I before e, except after c.” This works most of the time, but “reign” breaks the rule. It is not even word orgin as both recieve and reign come from French.

I thought through it and I’d wager a stiff draught that it ought not be so rough, though as I’m taught, it’s nought to cough at that a sturdy, taut bough would snap under the weight of its idiosyncrasies.

I still can’t spell recieve and receipt

Hey, you got one of them right!

Oh, no, it’s wrong grammatically too, they just don’t teach this unless you study linguistics. Most of all languages with fixed word order and some others have a natural order of adjectives. Tom Scott has a great vid about it.

Yes, Russian has an adjective order too. “A big old blue car” would be «большая старая синяя машина», saying «синяя большая старая машина» implies that “big old car” is a specific term.

It’s because of the adjective order. You grow up hearing everyone else use the same common adjective order. In this case it should be size shape color than condition.

Overall it would be opinion size, age shape, color, origin material purpose.

Because everyone uses that same adjective order as a child. You picked up on that so consciously and then adopted that style. There’s nothing that actually prevents you from mixing that up. There’s no rule or some sort of quirk of English that will break if you change that order.

You’re just not used to any other way so it sounds weird.

But changing that order won’t create any sort of confusion or loss of understanding. It’ll just make you have to actively think about something thus slowing you down. We’re doing it the way that everyone does it subconsciously is faster because you don’t have to actively think of it.

So by default you will always choose the fastest way to communicate. Because that’s going to require the least amount of thought for both yourself and the other party.

But again there is no reason you can’t change it.

The only real issue I can think of is if you do change it on purpose it would create an emphasis because you’re breaking a normality. Cuz people just subconsciously assume you go from subjective to objective when it comes to adjectives.

And changes to the standard stand out and thus create points of interest. But again, even that is still not a hard syntax rule.

English doesn’t really have a lot of hard rules. You can f*** with it real hard and it won’t break. Though you may sound very funny!.

I know it’s not wrong, but it would definitely give one away as a non-native speaker and come across very awkwardly.

It’s not that hard once you understand the difference. It’s more like getting a feel for it than following an actual rule, but a good starting point is that が indicates the subject of a clause, whereas は indicates the topic a sentence is in reference to, which can often also be the subject of the primary clause, which is why they get confused.

For instance, 私が疲れた (watashi ga tsukareta) would mean “I am tired” literally, but it would sound awkward, because the more usual way to phrase this would be closer to “as for me, tired” or 私は疲れた (watashi wa tsukareta).

It’s not a perfect rule, and there isn’t a perfect way to directly translate it because English (and most European languages) don’t have a comparable grammar structure. But generally if you’re speaking in reference to yourself or another person, the correct particle is usually “wa”, but not always. It just takes practice to get a feel for the exceptions.

And often enough “wa” is used instead of “ga” for objects and places, but it’s easier to get a feel for the difference. For instance, さっぽろが寒い (Sapporo ga samui) and さっぽろは寒い (Sapporo wa samui) are both correct, but have slightly different meanings, although the English translations of both would sound the same, “Sapporo is cold”.

The difference is that with “ga,” it’s more like an isolated statement of fact. On the other hand, with “wa” it’s usually being contrasted with something, often implicit and unstated, carrying nuance like “as opposed to where we are” or “as opposed to the rest of Japan” or “as opposed to our other options for a travel destination”, but what exactly it’s being contrasted with is usually clear from the context of the conversation.

At the end of the day, “ga” is usually cut and dry: it marks the subject of a sentence the same way “wo”, “ni”, “he”, “de”, etc., mark other grammatical cases (direct/indirect objects, prepositional phrases, etc.).

“Ha” is the only one you need to watch out for with its very distinctive Japanese-ness. Although Korean has a very similar construct.

Simple as.

I prefer dealing with complicated but ultimately rule-based stuff like は/が over the utter nonsense that is grammatical gender (and I’m German).

Edit: and because I see heated discussion about it elsewhere: grammatical gender is a very convenient thing to have (not to learn) and I wouldn’t abolish it (just wouldn’t want to learn it).

Gwa.

(There are whole books written about the usages, but this is far from the worst thing to get wrong if you’re new to Japanese so don’t worry).

oh and how do you label yourself then?

You speak Hun-glish? I knew a little old lady way back in the day that spoke Hun-glish. As a medic, it took several conversations before I could even begin to understand her spoken symptoms.

You need to reach like 6 or 7 language before you can experience fifo overflow

Is it done in Russian by prefixes or suffixes or something else, or do they just not have that form for nouns?

Technically it’s the other way around - the ones German lost in comparison to Russian were the Instrumental and Prepositional (Locative).

This is from the original 8 (or 9) cases in their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Locative, Vocative, (Allative).

That doesn’t sound more simple.

One of my Polish colleagues, who otherwise speaks pretty perfect English, seems to choose he/she/it at random when putting sentences together. Which is fine for objects, but misleading for people. “I saw a friend yesterday and she said such-and-such” for a male friend, and so on.