Demonstratives are words that indicate which objects a sentence is referring to. English has four demonstratives: 'this', 'that', 'these', and 'those'.

Latin had several sets of demonstratives, including:

   hic, haec, hoc
   ille, illa, illud
   iste, ista, istud

The second set, 'ille', etc., meaning 'that', developed into the definite articles in several Romance languages, such as 'el', 'la', 'los', 'las' in Spanish, 'le', 'la', 'les' in French and 'il', 'la', 'i', 'le' in Italian.