Specificity. "The" implies one specific subject. "A" implies that there are multiple instances of the subject, and in many cases such subjects are used to categorize things. "The dog is a golden retriever." --. "The dog" is the specific dog being mentioned, and "a golden retriever" is its category.
"He was the victim" implies he was the only victim. "He was a victim" implies that there were other victims.
What's your first language? All of the european languages that I've studied have this feature.
This is a good general rule but this still breaks down. For instance, I say "I'm going to the bank". But really this means "I'm going to a branch of the bank that I bank with". The same occurs with words like theatre, mall, etc. I kind of think this is a holdover from a time where towns only had one theatre, one bank, one school, etc.
It would be correct to have a conversation like:
> Let's go to the mall.
> Which one?
> I don't know. Do you have a preference?
Then we have places like "school", "work", "home" where we drop the "the". If we say "I'm going to the school" this implies that we're going for a different reason than normal where we'd say "I'm going to school".
Proper names don't usually have "the" in front of them but then we say "The Ukraine" and "The Philippines" and "The Yukon" as if we're distinguishing them from other Ukraines.
My wife is non-native English speaker so I encounter this a lot. I understand the confusion of this. Plus a lot of other languages don't think this way. When you grow up in a language where you don't care about specificity while you're talking, it becomes pretty difficult to start thinking about it later in life.
which come from the same PIE roots, but we don't use them as often. We generally understand from context whether we're talking about something specific or general.
And only use those helpers when we need clarification. There are also other ways to differentiate. For example speaking in singular (cat/kot) may mean 'a specific cat', but saying 'cats/koty' may mean 'a cat/cats'.
In other words, using 'the/a' is in majority of cases unnecessary from our point of view, because if we're talking about 'our cat' for an hour, we don't need to stress that it's 'the cat' that I meant when I said 'cat', or when we say 'Please feed cat' and we have a cat, it's way more likely that it's about our cat than some random cat on the street.
And this creates enormous problems for us when learning English or German (not sure about romance languages). We often ask ourselves, if we know whether we're talking about something specific or in general should we always use 'a/the -> ein/die'. And the answer is 'pretty much'. Unless you don't use it :)
'Love is a powerful emotion', and not 'A/The love is a powerful emotion', and even more elusive cases where those articles are not used.
My first language is Russian. I just don't have mental wires in my mind to fully understand the differences. I know them in theory, but it's hard for me to fluently apply and understand the nuances which is not the case with other language constructions.
And if the media would stop writing alarmist articles, there would be far less panic. We're in the golden age of yellow journalism. I've learned, in general, panicking creates more problems than there were to begin with.
Parts of East Baton Rouge Parish are liberal enough to be considered New France, but Livingston Parish doesn't deserve the title -- it's more like 50/50. The line may be determined by Catholic vs Protestant; New France consists of Catholic majority Parishes.
I'm a part of the French revival movement in South Louisiana to help preserve the culture. Most French speakers are 60+ years old, which is sad. Before about 1970, children suffered corporal punishment if they spoke French in school. Blame it on the Anglo-protestants.
There isn't much French spoken in Nouvelle Orleans anymore. Same goes for Baton Rouge. This largely happened after Reconstruction: some of the Yankee leadership who took over were just as xenophobic as Southern slave-owners. I'm not trying to defend this change in leadership having to occur, it was necessary to make sure the South didn't try to keep slavery alive. Unfortunately, nationalist leadership was much like today's conservatives in wanting the only official language of L'etats Unis to be Anglais.
South Louisiana is highly underrated though, especially the city of Baton Rouge. Weed is decriminalized, there's an incredible symphony orchestra, plenty of art museums, and damn good food. But it's much more "American" of a town than New Orleans or Acadiana.
Here's a hilarious article explaining the division between North and South Louisiana:
I am in South Louisiana as well, close to New Orleans. Grandfather is full Cajun, grew up in Cutoff, with his father being the captain of a shrimp boat.
One of my goals next year is to learn French. Do you speak French?
Good to know! Where do you find people speaking Cajun French in Louisiana? We went to the Festivals Acadiens et Créoles a few months ago, the only time I heard French was in the music, no one seemed to use French during a conversation.
