Thread: the floor

Originally Posted by bitpicker

This dialogue does not sound very natural because the important information inquired about by A is "new". There was a floor before the one being currently put in. Nobody would say "we're putting in the floor" here because it makes it sound as if there hadn't been a floor there in the first place. On the other hand, A could enquire "What are you going to do next?" and B could reply "We are going to put the floor in next" - here you have a first mention with a definite article because a room only has one floor and the type of floor is not important.

To tell you the truth, I never noticed how damn difficult the correct usage of articles is before I met Russians trying to come to terms with the concept. No matter how hard I try to explain all the shades of meaning conveyed by the articles, I never seem to be able to define them fully and clearly. You have my sympathies.

Thanks Robin. It's really hard for Russian people to use these 'a'/'the' articles because we have no articles in Russian as I am sure you know. Yes, I thought that a room has only one floor and that's why the floor is used. But what if the room has also one window but we say 'a window'?

I just had a list of words - a window, a door, a plant, etc. and the floor was the only word that was used with the definite article. Maybe because we can say windows, plants, doors, etc. and I am not sure we can say floors in plural?