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Two Simple Questions: Marie-Anne Duffeler
Two Simple Questions: Marie-Anne Duffeler
‘A’, ‘the’ and ‘an’ – these are called articles and they are the smallest words in English. But
they cause some of the biggest problems.
By the end of this article you will understand how and when to use articles…but why are
these small words so important?
Let me tell you the story of Ugo Umberti, a young Italian lawyer who recently joined a law
firm in London. Ugo is an expert in legal matters, but less so in English…
One day he receives a phone call from Nancy, a businesswoman who needs some legal
advice. She asks to schedule an appointment for Thursday.
One little word made a huge difference. As a result, Ugo (and Nancy!) confused ‘go to prison’
with ‘go to the prison’. With no article Ugo was talking about the action or function – ‘go to
prison’ – instead of what he meant to say, which was the location – ‘going to the prison’.
If like Ugo you also feel confused about English articles, read on. All you need to remember
are 2 simple questions – let me explain.
Countable means that the noun can be counted. For example, ‘book’ is countable
and we say, ‘one book’ or ‘two, three, or several books’.
Mixed nouns. This third category causes many unnecessary difficulties for English
learners: All it means is that the context decides whether some nouns are countable
or uncountable, depending on their meaning.
For example ‘chocolate’ is uncountable when it refers to the food that we use in cooking or
that we love to eat (‘I prefer dark chocolate’), but it is countable when it refers to the drink (‘a
hot chocolate’) or a small, chocolate-covered candy (‘Belgian chocolates’).
Another example of this third category is ‘adventure’: it is uncountable when it means taking
part in dangerous and exciting experiences in general (‘I love adventure’) but it is countable
when it means a specific dangerous and exciting experience (‘a great adventure’).
The diagram below shows this difference: those labelled A are countable nouns and B are
uncountable nouns, while C is the ‘hybrid’ group that are both countable and uncountable
depending on the context:
Why are those categories difficult for English learners? Because they don’t always match
your native language.
For example, in Italian ‘lavoro‘ can be translated as ‘work’ or ‘job’, but only ‘job’ is countable.
So, if you refer to a specific working position (un lavoro), you should say ‘a job’. But if you
mean professional activity in general (‘il lavoro‘), you should use the word ‘work’ with no
article in front of it.
Another example is ‘un consiglio‘: ‘advice’ is the correct translation but it is uncountable, so if
you want to refer to a specific ‘consiglio’, you should say ‘a recommendation’ or ‘a
suggestion’.
How do you know if a noun is countable or not? Unfortunately, nothing in the form of the
noun will tell you that. So, when learning new vocabulary, you need to study the words
themselves and whether they are countable or not.
To help you remember, you can choose to use a specific color to highlight uncountable
nouns in vocabulary lists, or you can memorize them with an example sentence that shows
how they are used – for example, ‘John gives good advice’ will help you remember that
‘advice’ is uncountable.
Also, you can always check whether a word is countable or uncountable in a good dictionary,
such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
Work
So, after asking ourselves the first question, let’s now turn to the second question:
Now let’s look at how objects become definite. What makes nouns definite?
Notice how the smart phone is not definite (or, indefinite) when it is first mentioned.
However, when it is mentioned the second time, it becomes definite, and so ‘the’ is used.
‘The’ is the article we use when the noun is definite.
We can see that ‘the sun’ and ‘the world’ refer to unique entities. Indeed ‘the sun’ refers to
the one we see every day, while ‘the world’ is our planet, the Earth. In our minds those
objects are unique.
In the third example ‘the squirrel’ is a generalization: it means all the squirrels in general. It
represents the animal category of ‘squirrels.
The context is clear enough for speaker and listener to know which object is referred to.
In the first situation you know which ‘document’ is being referred to: the one that is attached
to the email. In the second situation ‘the handouts must refer to the ones that you can see
being distributed at that moment.
The extra information in the first sentence is called a noun complement (‘of your plane
ticket to Rome’), and in the second sentence it is a relative clause (‘that I bought’).
This extra information makes the object definite and is needed to understand the
sentence. Indeed, if I say only “our company will pay the cost”, you don’t know what I
mean. The cost of what?
This is true of the second example too. If I remove the relative clause and say, “the smart
phone is great”, my sentence is incomplete and unclear. Which smart phone? Yours? Mine?
Or smart phones in general?
Ranking or comparing objects make them definite because they are compared to other
ones, and so they are identified by contrast: a total of 12 people have walked on the
Moon, but Neil Armstrong is identified as ‘the first’; we realize that there are several
issues, but safety is the issue being compared to the others.
Putting it all together
All right, now that you have answered these two simple questions (countable or
uncountable? definite or indefinite?), you can choose the right article by looking at the
following diagram:
You notice immediately that articles vary according to the type of noun (question 1), to the
context (question 2), and to quantity (singular or plural).
The symbol Ø means ‘zero article’ – in other words, there is nothing before the noun.
Also, some forms are identical (‘the’), so you don’t have to memorize many article forms. And
that’s good news!
Examples
So, let’s apply what you have learnt to some examples:
2. Idiomatic uses:
Home / town: No article precedes ‘home’ unless you add extra information
(for example an adjective) or ‘town’ when it refers to your own town.
For example:
Nancy is going home.
I am in town now – I am shopping.
This is a nice home you have! (did you notice the adjective?)
However, if you refer to the building itself, you should use the article ‘the’.
For example:
Parents are going to the school to meet the teachers.
Nancy is going to the church to see the beautiful windows.
The lawyer will go to the prison to see his client.
Note: Work has a number of different meanings in the dictionary, but the most common
use of it as a noun, meaning a profession or a job as used in the examples above. When
we are talking about ‘work’ as a literary or artistic composition – a novel, a play, a
symphony, a sculpture, etc. – then it’s countable.
Only practice can make choosing the right article effortless. Only practice will make it
automatic.
Ask your English teacher for some exercises on articles or search online – there are lots of
good grammar websites. To get started, there are some exercises here and here.
Has this explanation been helpful? Please let me know in the comments below: