🔥 THE RULES! When do we use “THE” in English? (And when DON’T we?)

so much confusion most of my students use the when they shouldn't use the and don't use the when they should use the so how do we know when to use it [Music] before i give you some rules on when to use the and when not to use the in english i want to tell you about two different ways we can pronounce this simple word first we have the and there is also the pronunciation v now it all depends what the next word begins with if the next word begins with a vowel we say thee the elephant the octopus the owl but if the next word begins with a consonant we use the pronunciation the the building the table the boy the girl the okay i got over a hundred questions about the when i asked you about it on youtube so let's start with the first one the big one when don't we use the [Music] meals like breakfast lunch and dinner have you had lunch yet do you want to go out for dinner tomorrow night i have breakfast at eight o'clock when we're talking about meals we don't use the word the compass directions when we're talking about directions we don't use the word the like birds fly south for the winter it's the direction that they are going however when we're talking about a particular region then we use the word the for example i am from the north of england they pronounce some words differently in the south [Music] proper nouns what is a proper noun a proper noun is something like a name of a person a city a month a day things that we normally use a capital letter for in english and we don't use the word the for those my english teacher is greg not the greg i bought it on amazon i didn't buy it on the amazon greg bought it on amazon and it will be delivered on tuesday no the in any of those situations why did i use amazon as an example there well keep watching and you'll find out why later in the video [Music] languages do you speak english what's your level of english i speak spanish fluently i would love to learn greek with languages we don't use the [Music] okay we have some very very common words that we talk about every day they are bed home and work and these don't have the word the i go to work at nine o'clock i get home at five o'clock i go to bed at 11 o'clock are you at home no i'm at work i wish i was in bed [Music] institutions like church hospital and prison and also educational institutions like primary school secondary school university college all of these don't have the word the he left school at 16 she's going to university in september he was taken to hospital last night she's in prison for six years now there's a pretty big exception to this rule and that is if you are in that place but not for the primary reason of the place then we use the so if you've been a naughty person you go to prison where is he he's in prison but if you are visiting that person or if you work at the prison you use the word the okay if you are ill you are in hospital know the but if you are visiting or working there then you use the so if i say he's in hospital you might say what happened but if i say she's in the hospital you might say oh who's she visiting why is she there okay another little exception here with university yes we don't use the for university he goes to university if the title of the university includes of which it often does to describe the place where the university is then yes we use the word the she goes to cambridge university he goes to the university of kent because university of kent includes the word of we use the cambridge university doesn't so we don't use the okay do you want to know the two most common mistakes that my students make with the the first one is things like this the 90 percent of people bloody bloody blah with percentages we do not use the it's simply 90 of people blah blah blah blah and the second one is the most of people want to go bloody blue and again we don't use the most of people it's simply most people most people want to so yeah this is exactly the type of thing that i teach you inside my free book english quick fix so if you want to fix these typical typical mistakes click up there to get the book or click the link in the description it's free and it's great okay so quick summary of all the most important places where we don't use the meals compass directions but not regions proper nouns like names cities days of the week months languages bed home and work and educational institutions and a few other institutions like church hospital and prison okay let's now have a look at the most important rule for when we need to use the word the [Music] we're going to use bananas to explain this now you know bananas bananas are yellow right bananas are yellow when we're talking about something in general a general fact bananas are yellow we don't use the okay because we're talking about bananas in general however if we're talking about something specific for example the bananas i bought this morning we use the word the the bananas i bought this morning are green okay i'm talking about a specific bunch of bananas in my kitchen there are six bananas and they are specific the bananas in my kitchen are green so that is the most basic rule of when we use the but let's have a look at some very very important situations where we must also use the [Music] superlatives like the biggest the best the fastest the fastest animal in the world is the cheetah the biggest animal is the elephant the best football team is liverpool [Music] ordinal numbers like the first the second the third the fourth with these we always need the and that's why when we're talking about dates in english we need the the fourth of april the fourth of april so dates in british english need the [Music] have you noticed that the names of some countries use the like why is it the united kingdom but england why is it the united states but mexico well the reason is that when a country is formed of many individual parts then we use the so the united states or the us is made up of many different states the united kingdom refers to scotland england wales and northern ireland it's made up of different parts so we use the the maldives it's a country with many many many islands many different parts so we use the [Music] oceans seas rivers forests and mountain ranges but not mountains and lakes it would be easy if we could include everything together but they are exceptions there are always exceptions in english but hey this is quite a good rule that we can use to know when to use the the amazon is a huge rainforest in south america the amazon we use the for this word because it's a forest if we don't use the word the and just talk about amazon we're talking about the website so the amazon have you swum in the pacific the pacific i went on a cruise down the nile when i visited egypt we went skiing in the alps but specific mountains and lakes we don't use the so lake michigan is one of the great lakes johnny climbed kilimanjaro with his dad [Music] names of unique objects things of which there is only one in the world we use the word the the sun the internet the moon the queen of england there is only one of these things so we use the [Music] musical instruments we use the so i play football no the for sports but she plays the piano we use the for instruments i love playing the ukulele i learned the ukulele on youtube [Music] for systems and services we use the so i'm gonna call the police i read it on the internet i'm listening to the radio called the fire brigade these are all services that exist and we use the [Music] families in england normally every member of the family has the same surname for example david beckham and victoria beckham so when we're talking about the family we say the beckhams that refers to that family i'm sick of hearing about the kardashians [Music] now we can use the plus an adjective to talk about everybody included in that adjective so look at these two examples he serves food to the homeless every saturday morning the homeless this refers to a group of people who are homeless this charity raises money for the poor again the poor refers to a big group of people who are poor a common one is the elderly the elderly refers to elderly people people who are old another similar way of using this is with the plus a species an animal species or a group of people to generalize about that group of people for example the panda is in danger of extinction if we say this we're not talking about one specific panda but we're talking about the species [Music] i mentioned dates earlier when i was talking about ordinal numbers but we can also use it for decades and centuries for example according to my dad the 60s was a great time to be alive oh life was very different in the 19th century to the 21st century okay a good video to watch next would be that one in which i teach you about another other the other and others so i'll see you in that video next if you've liked this one give it a thumbs up and bloody bloody blog you know what to do and i'll see you in the next video soon bye for now [Music]

Channel: English with Greg

Views: 376,809

Keywords: english with greg, british english, pronunciation, pronunciation the, learn english, british english teacher, how to pronounce the, pronunciation of the word the, when to use the, when not rto use the, when do we use the, the v no the, definite articles english grammar, the word the, word the english grammar, use of the word the in english grammar, the word in english grammar, the word the in english, word the, rules for using the, When do we use “THE” in English

Id: _gJxN-fbDCc

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2022