Hello everybody today I'm going to bring you a new lesson on errors that you make when
you are using the most often used articles, namely a, an and the. well, these articles
are used every time but believe it or not even people who are beginning to speak English
and those who speak English every day happen to make mistakes using these words very, very
often. So today we are going to deal with certain rules that we are going to apply to
ensure that we don't make mistakes concerning these words and therefore speak English correctly,
okay.
Rule number 1, you will not, so you don't use the article a or the article an with a
plural uncountable noun. Now we all know what a plural noun is, right? Anything which is
more than one, plus one is a plural noun but what is an uncountable noun? Nouns which cannot
be counted are called uncountable nouns, right? So, for example we have a noun like knowledge.
This is an uncountable noun. you can't count knowledge, you can't say one knowledge, two
knowledge, three knowledges, no you just say knowledge because you can't count knowledge
right but as per the rule you will not or you cannot use an a or an an before this uncountable
noun. You can’t say a knowledge, please give me a knowledge. You could say please
give me knowledge or please give me some knowledge but you can't use a before it okay. Similarly
another very often used uncountable noun which is information, okay it can't be counted.
You have two informations or three informations. It's just information you can't count it right?
So you will never use an an or an a before it either. You could say I need a piece of
information but you can't say I need an information right. The same goes with another uncountable
noun which is music. You can listen to some music but you can't listen to a music okay,
so that is how we do not use a or an an before uncountable nouns or nouns that you can't
count okay.
Rule number two tells us that the article a or an an will be used only before the sound.
It could be a vowel or a consonant sound. Now growing up when we learned English, our
English teachers would always tell us that you've got to use an A in front of a consonant
and you've got to use an AN before a vowel and they were right you know. You can use
an AN before the a,e,i,o,u which is a vowel and the remainder letters are consonants before
which you can use an A right but that is partly correct because when you are using the a or
the an sometimes you've got to follow the sound. Which means that the letter in the
word could be a vowel but the letter could have a consonant sound. Let's see how okay.
The word hour we always use an hour right. The usage of a hour would be wrong. Why do
you think? So well let's look at the word hour begins with a H. We know that the H is
a consonant. It's not a vowel so it's a consonant right but as per the rule that we grew up
learning a always comes before the consonant right not so in this case because the letter
H has the AH sound or the a sound which is a vowel so even though the letter is a consonant,
the letter has a vowel sound because of which you are going to use an before it. So therefore
you always say an hour and not a hour okay. On the other hand you have a word like uniform
okay. We all know that U is a vowel right and we grew up learning that you've got to
use an AN before the vowel but the word uniform has the U which actually gives me the Y the
Y sound and the Y is a consonant which is why you always use a uniform and you will
never say an uniform okay. So that's the second rule that you apply to avoid making errors
while using the a and the AN.
Okay, now rule number three tells us that we can use a or an an with a noun after it.
So I can use an A and an AN if it is followed by a noun correct. So let's see how that is
going to be used. So if I say, I'm an officer okay, I am an officer. Is officer a noun?
Yes, it is, so therefore you can use the AN before it because after the AN we have a noun
following right. Similarly, this is an interesting movie. I cannot say this is an interesting.
I have to follow that up with a noun and in this case, it is, this is an interesting movie
or this is a boring movie. You have to have a noun that follows either of these articles
okay.
Okay the next rule that we would need to follow for the article the, is that when we are using
the, we can use it with an countable or an uncountable noun there is no specific rule
to that. However you will use the only when you are talking about specific things or being
very particular or you are specifying a certain thing in, you know. So let's look at the example
okay the first one says, eating meat gives you protein okay. This sentence does not have
the use of the anywhere in it. Why do you think so? Let's read the sentence again okay
to see if there is any mistake alright eating meat gives you protein. We do not use the,
because this statement is a very general statement. It's a general statement we are making right
but when you are making a statement and being very specific about a certain noun whether
it is uncountable or countable that is when you use the word the. So look at the next
sentence, we say the meat at the market may not be fresh. Now we are talking about a specific
meat, it could be chicken, it could be beef it could be anything right, at the market.
It could be a specific market maybe you know a supermarket near your house or a supermarket
near the place you work at. So we are specifying the noun, we are trying to you know give you
our pinpoint a particular thing we're specifying it and therefore you will use the article
the okay. So when you are talking about general things you don't use the, when you're trying
to specify the noun and whether it is uncountable or countable that's when you use the word
the okay.
Okay rule number five says that you are not going to use the with a lot of things like
countries. So you can't say I am from the India. You have exceptions, you can say I'm
from the UK or I am from the US or I'm from the Philippines but in general you don't use
the with countries. You do not use the with continents, you don't live in the Asia, you
live in Asia okay. States, again do not have a the, you don't live in the California, you
live in California. Okay the same applies to cities, streets and also companies with
a few exceptions mostly companies do not have the word the before it okay. The same goes
for English, I do not speak the English I speak English, I speak French I do not speak
Spanish; I can't say I do not speak the Spanish okay. The same goes for holidays. I will visit
you on the Christmas no, I will visit you on Christmas or I will visit you on the New
Year's okay. So you don't use the when you're talking about holidays in general okay. Words
like home, work, jail, church and college also will not have the. So you can't say I'm
going to the home, I'm going home that sounds more right, correct? I'm going to work; you
don't say I'm going to the work. I'm going to jail that sounds more better than saying
I'm going to the jail correct? The same about church and college. I go to church, I go to
college. You will not say I go to the church or to the college.
Okay, these are a few ways as to how you can actually avoid errors when you are using these
articles which are, a an and the. I hope you found this lesson very informative till then
keep practising and make sure you don't make these errors again. I'll be back with some
more lessons until then this is me saying goodbye.