Thread: Article "A"

Originally Posted by bitpicker

Yeah, the mind boggles...

That's true. I mean, I'm not a grammarian kind of person, so remembering those rules and exceptions kind of does not work for me in a speech. So, sometimes I have to create my own intuitive rules which work sometimes and do not work in other cases. Like, I know I could relatively safely use "the" if I can substitute it with "my", "your", "our", or "their" and the sentence would still make sense. And I'm pretty sure this rule is incorrect, but it helps me using "the" at least somehow...

If ever you decide to learn German, not only do we have articles too, but we apply our cases to them! Serves you right for having verb aspects!

I don't think it is possible to learn to speak a language well by learning and applying rules. Rules help getting an understanding of the concepts, but the ideas they represent have to be ingrained in the brain just as they are in a native speaker brain. No child learns its native language by rules. Rules are tools a grown-up can use in order to approach a language from a different level. English is a second language for me, and the rules I describe here I do not usually fetch from memory but derive them from what I know about the usage of the language.