I think any English speaker could tell you the difference between “the” and “a”. Even if it’s not in their immediate knowledge bank as a fact, they could think of a tiny set of examples and work it out immediately.
[edit] "I go to Church" works because Church is a proper noun when used in that sentence (and it's only used as a proper noun by devout Christians). Properly they mean "I go to [the/a] church", and the reason they leave out the particle is that they mean "THE CHURCH" but they want to sound humble, so they can't say that; but they also can't say "I go to a church," because that would be denying that the church they go to is the One True Church. That's why they don't use a particle in that particular phrase. The proper particle is "a", and "church" shouldn't be capitalized.
[edit2] this is not an attempt to start a religious flame war. I'm just commenting on the grammar.
[edit3] Just to demonstrate the proper noun thing I'm referring to, Jews "go to Temple" (capitalized, proper noun), or go to a temple, but they don't "go to temple".
Regarding “I go to Church”, the verb to go here doesn’t actually mean movement, it’s a euphemism for “I worship”. Same with “temple”. If you say “I go to a/the church” you are actually stating movement towards a definite or indefinite place.
Again, these are challenging subtleties for language speakers where all nouns are conceptual. And most native speakers can’t explain these exceptions spontaneously
In my hometown: There's only 1 of each and wouldn't be confusing.
Where I live now: Which one?
These don't refute GP's definition, your examples are just missing the shared context that determines whether it's correct or not.
"I went to the the train station to pick up a map on my way here". "Great, thanks!"
It was a specific train station that I chose intentionally or visit regularly, but it's not relevant to the conversation which one.
If I were to use "a train station" then it implies I didn't care which train station it was.
This was some truly bizarre reasoning based off one example and it has zero actual foundation in language. One of the strangest comments I’ve ever seen on HN.
The "I go to Church" example, is a case in point. In both German and Spanish, a definite article is required.
That shows that, while there is a systematic difference between "a" and "the", it breaks down in many edge cases.
You're definitely wrong here, because "I go to school" and "I go to work" are equally grammatical statements, and there is no way to construe those as involving proper nouns. You can also see this construction with words like bed or the various mealtimes.
The commonality I can derive from these various examples is something along the lines of "state of being," although I find that a poor descriptor. This kind of formation is limited to relatively few locations (you can't say "I go to mall" for example), but for everything I can think up, you can also use the word sans determiner in other circumstances ("College has gotten expensive as of late," for example).
(And then there's US Eng vs UK Eng...)
She was baffled when I replied that I hadn't heard of The Conservatory before.
It took us minutes to understand she meant a conservatory: they studied at a music school. I agree that it's more complex than native speakers realize.
ze heeft op/aan het conservatorium gestudeerd - she studied at (the) conservatory
hij heeft op/aan het hbo/de universiteit gestudeerd - he studied at (the) college/university
No, it isn’t. I frequently see native speakers refer to “the store” when that doesn’t hold — hence why it feels like a special case or break from the usual rules.
> I say "I went to the store" or "I went to the pub" it's somewhere we both go or experience or have an expectation of going or experiencing, no further introduction needed. If we both go to the same conservatory then "the conservatory" would work,
Native speakers say “the store” even when there’s no expectation that a) I know which store they mean, or b) I go there myself or will in the future. ie, the standard you use for deciding whether “the” would work in the conservatory example.
Even under your new standard, you should say that “the conservatory” is fine as long as the listener “goes/has gone to conservatories”.
Finally, in case it matters: yes, I have had native speakers (my parents) say “the store” even when I (also a native speaker) didn’t go shopping at all, being too young to do it. (This is why oh-so-clever rhetorical questions should be used with caution.)
That's the end of our conversation, we're discussing grammar and its colloquial use, not anything that requires "good faith argumentation". Inane.
I agree that if you're not going to take the discussion seriously, you probably shouldn't join it -- it just makes HN worse. Strawman argumentation doesn't suddenly become okay just because "hey man, we were just discussing grammar and its colloquial use", as if it's somehow okay to deliberately misinterpret someone and waste their time in that case.
> Native speakers say “the store” even when there’s no expectation that a) I know which store they mean,
The other person doesn't need to know, it's acting like a specific place has been introduced without it being introduced because to specifically introduce it is wasteful.
> or b) I go there myself or will in the future. ie, the standard you use for deciding whether “the” would work in the conservatory example.
Everyone except the terminal and imminent misfortune will go shopping to the kind of shop "the" will be put in front of. If you were a musician and said "when I went to the conservatory" I wouldn't blink either.
> Even under your new standard, you should say that “the conservatory” is fine as long as the listener “goes/has gone to conservatories”.
It may well be, and it still fits with what I described, and expected shared experience that is assumed to need no further introduction for the rest of what is about to be told.
> Finally, in case it matters: yes, I have had native speakers (my parents) say “the store” even when I (also a native speaker) didn’t go shopping at all, being too young to do it.
You have been or will go shopping in your life, and you know or will come to know what they are referring to. Older people will often use language to youngsters that youngsters do not fully understand yet. It helps the youngsters come to understand it.
> (This is why oh-so-clever rhetorical questions should be used with caution.)
Because they point out the stupidity of a response and may invite further stupidity in response? Yes, that is a downside.
>The other person doesn't need to know, it's acting like a specific place has been introduced without it being introduced because to specifically introduce it is wasteful.
That was in response to the reply where you said:
>I say "I went to the store" or "I went to the pub" it's somewhere we both go or experience or have an expectation of going or experiencing, no further introduction needed. If we both go to the same conservatory then "the conservatory" would work,
In other words, I only brought that up, because you were saying it falls under a case where both people know which one it refers to. If you weren't using that defense, you shouldn't have replied here.
>>Even under your new standard, you should say that “the conservatory” is fine as long as the listener “goes/has gone to conservatories”.
>It may well be, and it still fits with what I described, and expected shared experience that is assumed to need no further introduction for the rest of what is about to be told.
Great, but there you're definitely diverging from native speaker usage (as illustrated from the original comment [1]) -- native speakers do not otherwise use "the" for such cases, and would agree you shouldn't say "the conservatory" in that case just because the listener has also gone to a conservatory.
>You have been or will go shopping in your life, and you know or will come to know what they are referring to. Older people will often use language to youngsters that youngsters do not fully understand yet. It helps the youngsters come to understand it.
True, but irrelevant to the issue at at hand. Here you were claiming that it's fine because it's expected that the listener has already shopped at that store. If you want to switch to "well, they're going to model how other people would treat the store's definiteness" that is a different reason for making the noun definite here, which would still make this case different and break the usual pattern of when a noun is made definite.
>>(This is why oh-so-clever rhetorical questions should be used with caution.)
>Because they point out the stupidity of a response and may invite further stupidity in response? Yes, that is a downside.
Any stupidity it pointed out was on your own side -- you were absolutely incredulous at the idea that there might be a native speaker that never goes shopping. Haha! Point for you! What a dumb argument! Now everyone will see the light because you have pointed out a clear absurdity in the other person's position!
Except ... such people (non-shoppers) do exist. Which means, not only did you make a demonstrably false assumption, you were calling the other person stupid despite being correct, and adding one more layer of correction that has to be resolved before the discussion can continue.
Yeah -- that counts as a reason to be cautious of that technique.
"On my last vacation I went to the beach to work on my tan." vs "on my last vacation I went to a beach to work on my tan". "The beach" feels like I went to a specific beach on purpose (or that there was only one), while "a beach" feels like I just picked one at random.
"On my way here I stopped at the store to get an apple" vs "On my way here I stopped at a store to get an apple". Similarly, "the store" implies intentionality/singularity, while "a store" implies I happened upon it.
Right - and as I didn’t, I assumed she was using a proper noun. It’s fine English either way! Language is fun.
opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose
I haven't tested this extensively enough. Your thoughts and counterexamples welcomed!
I found this page by the British Council to be quite comprehensive, but may still miss something (eg. 'go to school' vs 'go to the school')
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/english-gram...
Do you know of some other resources that explain many grammatical points well?
I went to hospital.
I went to the hospital.
Where would that be standard?