Is it the definite article?
So, to reiterate, when it comes to when to use the “the”, the only universal rule is this:
Some rules (such as the two you’ve given) might hold 95%+ of the time, but unfortunately there may be weird and arbitrary exceptions that you’ll just have to learn.
Is it capitalization?
Because a cursory look at the Wikipedia page for capitalization also reveals that it is not without its quirks.
For example:
planets and other celestial bodies: “Jupiter”, “the Crab Nebula”; and “the Earth”, “the Sun”, or “the Moon” should be capitalized according to the International Astronomical Union based on its manual of style, but style guides may suggest differently.[19]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_in_English
Is it the fact the way something is written almost has no bearing on how it’s pronounced?
Please tell me your thoughts.
Pronunciation of same letters differently.
Rough. Bough. Cough. Sough. Lough. Dough. Though. Tough.
I also think the way we insert curse words is abso-fucking-lutely unique.
My favorite example: Lead and lead are both spelled the same, but pronounced differently and don’t rhyme with each other. They do, however, rhyme with read and read, which are also spelled identically but don’t rhyme with each other.
I still think this is less bullshit than languages with gendered nouns, however. Who the fuck gets to decide if a chair is masculine or feminine, and how is this decision reached? Why do different languages determine the gender of a chair differently? We already have plenty of human beings in the world with gender dysphoria, we do not need to be giving it to inanimate objects.
(I tried to learn German once and am still salty about this)
I believe it’s due to the endings of the different words and those are described as male or female. Just a term to describe a binary (remember, these languages were formed WAY back and were influenced by various religions), kind of like how quarks have “colours” that aren’t actually colours. Not many people actually believe a table is assigned male or female! And I think the gendered nouns can differ, something in French could be female while in Italian it’s male, since the word endings are a bit different.
One convenience of gendered nouns is that you can use shortened pronouns and the listener immediately knows what you are talking about. “Sit on him!” means sit on the chair and not the sofa, for example, because the sofa is neuter. So it’s not a matter of chair being more “masculine” so much as having three different forms of “it” pronoun. Still not enough convenience to make it worth it to learn from scratch, IMO.
My nemesis are the words “chose/choose lose/loose”. I always have to go through a quick tonguetwister in my head whenever I have to write one down to make sure I pick the correct one.
I also tried to learn German and I remember this about gendered nouns:
The man = der mann (masculine)
The woman = die frau (feminine)
The boy = der junge (masculine)
The girl = das mädchen (neutral)
Not even genders themselves have the genders you’d expect lol
Also in French once you get past about 60 the numbers turn insane. E.g. 97 = Quatre-vingt-dix-sept, or literally Four-twenty-ten-seven.
I like that different pronunciations and spellings are a history of integrating different languages and cultures. Especially now with all the hatred, spite and racism, at least I get to be amused that the language they claim as their own has a fundamental “diversity, equity and inclusion “
And no the Brit’s can’t claim to be the mother language - maybe they were the melting pot that spawned its birth, but as long as their fanny’s are on the wrong side …
(As someone who has historically been too sheltered so thought some societal issues were over dramatized, nothing could make me so pro “diversity, equity, and inclusion” like today’s US politics.)
This is my biggest gripe with English