"Some": an emergent article?

[cema]

Was in a cafe today, heard the waiter say: "I will be back with some menu".

Normal usage to me, but a friend (lives outside of the US) was amused. Like, will she just choose a random menu? Anyway, it does seem that "some" is often taking place of "a" in spoken American English. But does it qualify as an article? I wonder if linguists have anything to say about this.

Comments

[dimpas.livejournal.com]

it suffices to read scientific articles written in English by xUSSR folks.

Like "Let g be some element of G".
Even more frequent is the use of "some" as an "plural indefinite" article, i.e. using "some" before
a plural noun, like "some notions" instead of just "notions".

Some так иногда пишу :)

[cema.livejournal.com]

Happily, I have stopped reading such appers. On the other hand, I have had my share of papers written by Chinese scientists. Oy vey. On the other hand, the US (and Australia, but not Singapore) is the land of immigrants, so who knows how they will speak in 50 years. How we will speak, I should have said. ;-)

appers

[cema.livejournal.com]

Papers! This is not the way we will speak.

[dimpas.livejournal.com]

Singapore certainly is a land of immigrants. Singapore was a Malay island that brits have bought in late 19th century. They brought in chinese and tamils to build the harbour - the native population wasn't up to the task.
They have 4 official languages now...

Last but not the least for my humble self, I am about to move there (unless their INS decides that I'm too fishy to give me the permit) :)

mazzel,
d.

[dimpas.livejournal.com]

PS. their INS is called Ministry of Manpower.
So non-PC :)