I am currently learning German and Spanish, and found that I always need to use articles in Spanish but not in German. "Ich trinke Kaffee" is a correct sentence in German, as is "I drink water" in English, but "Bebo agua" in Spanish is not, only "Bebo el agua" is. From my understanding, ancient Latin did not have articles, and they were introduced to the language by Germanic invaders. Is there a historical reason for some languages not always requiring am article, yet modern Romance languages do?
This question is probably better for /r/linguistics.
However, there are an important note I can make. Latin's descendants didn't get articles from Germanic invaders. They're all Latin words, repurposed into articles. Use of articles was likely a feature developed in Vulgar Latin, which is the ancestor of the Romance languages. Wikipedia has a bunch of examples in different languages here.
/r/linguistics will be able to answer more exactly, but from what I understand it's ille, illa, illud (that) in Latin which morphs into il, le, el, etc.