the (2009-10-31)

Part of Speech: article

Pronunciation: [dhê before consonants, dhee before vowels]

Definition: (1) The definite article marks nouns referring to things the speaker expects the listener to be familiar with. "A dog" refers to any mutt while "the dog" refers to one the listener sees or knows about from a previous conversation. (2) Comparative of comparison: "The more the merrier"

Usage: If an object is unique, "the" is usually required: "the sun," "the moon," and others. In German the equivalent of "the" is used before proper nouns, e.g. der Hans "Hans," die Grete "Grete." Greek does the same. In Swedish, the definite is expressed by a suffix on nouns: en dag "a day," dagen "the day." Bulgarian does the same thing: student "student," studentêt "the student." That [t] at the end of the Bulgarian word is not coincidental: it comes from the same root as English "that."

Suggested Usage: An interesting fact about "the" is that it is used differently in different dialects. Everyone says "in school" and "at work" without the "the", but the British also drop it from "in hospital," "in future," and elsewhere. If you watched the popular British television series, 'All Creatures Great and Small,' you probably noticed that in Yorkshire, people say things like "I'll go to kitchen and put kettle on." (Actually, there is a barely audible glottal stop where we expect "the"—the remnants of the final [t] in "that.")

Etymology: Relatively few languages in the world have definite (the) and indefinite (a) articles. In English "a" is a reduction of "one" (cf. German ein "one, a") and "the" is a reduction of "that" (cf. German das "that, the"). In French (le, la), Italian (il, lo, la), and Spanish (el, lo, la) all come from Latin ille "that." The equivalent of "a" in all these languages also comes from the word for "one."