When should we use 'A', 'An', 'The' and No Article? (Daisy)

[All Levels] You probably think you know these articles well, but that might not be the case!

If you think this is way too easy for you, try to test yourself by taking this very quick test before you continue reading (it won't take more than 2 minutes and you don't have to register).

https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/21.html

Have you taken the quiz already? If not, GO AND TAKE IT FIRST and come back to continue reading. ^_^

You still didn't click on the link, did you? Here. https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/21.html

If you finally did, now let's talk.

So, did you get a perfect score? I'm not judging, but I bet you didn't hahaha

If you did, then great job! Let us know by leaving a comment below!

You know already that we use 'a' and 'an' for non-specific SINGULAR COUNTABLE nouns. When we say countable, it refers to persons, animals, places or things that can be counted. Examples are apples, boys, cows, cellphones. Uncountable nouns are not individual objects, so they can't be counted. Examples are sugar, oil, milk, tea, sand (we don't say sugars, oils..).

Again, we only use a/an for singular countable nouns. 'A' is used before a consonant sound, while 'An' is used before a vowel sound. This means that if a word starts with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u), we DON'T automatically use 'an', nor use 'a' automatically before a word that starts with a consonant. Again, we base it on the sound or how they're pronounced.

In the quiz, words like European, university, union, and one-day training all used 'a' although they start with a vowel. This is because we pronounce them as yuropean, yuniversity, yunion, and wən, and both y and w are consonants.

So we say a university, not an university.

The same goes for the word honest which starts with a consonant but is pronounced as /anəst/ with a schwa sound so we don't pronounce the e like how we pronounce the word nest.

So we say an honest person, not a honest person.

For the last item, MA (which can mean Master of Arts degree or Mature Audiences), we use 'an' and not 'a'. This is because we read an abbreviation as letters, so we say 'EM EY' not 'MA'.

Thus, we say I've got an MA, but we say I've got a master's degree.

The is used for specific nouns (singular or plural, countable or uncountable). For example, if you are talking about a particular person or thing with another speaker, we use the.

the girl in our school who likes pink the teacher who wears glasses the cute dog in that store the book that you borrowed

We use no article when we talk about things in a general sense.

(no article): All the students at my school study geography. (the) : We studied the geography of India in class yesterday. (no article): My mom say that money doesn't always make you happy. (the) : I gave my sister the money I owed her.

We also use no article with names of most buildings, cities, countries, lakes, towns, villages and mountains. But we use the for names of certain countries with the word Kingdom, Republic, or State, empires, islands, regions, deserts, mountain ranges, oceans, rivers, and seas.

the River Nile the Himalayas the Sahara Desert the United Kingdom the North of Spain

but we DON'T SAY:

the Madrid, the America, the Spain, the Lake Como

!!![ RULE EXCEPTION ]!!!

Countries in general don't use the article 'the'. My country, however, doesn't follow this rule.

So you can say, 'I visited the Philippines' but 'I visited the France' would be incorrect.

This is probably because or the official name of my country is 'Republic of the Philippines' or because it used to be called 'the Philippine Islands'. Another explanation could also be that it ends with an -s, so we say the Philippines, and the Netherlands.

Read more of the exceptions on this cambridge site: http://www.cambridge.org/grammarandbeyond/newsletter/2011/11/using-the-with-the-names-of-countries

I hope that helps! If you think this made you more confident on when to use 'a', 'an', 'the' and 'no article', I am challenging you for another quiz next week!