Articles: The Panama Canal made a/the journey by sea from London to California much easier.

Question

Hello,one more sentence is making me wonder:The Panama Canal made the journey by sea from London to California much easier.Again, to me this is quite a general sentence, so do you know why an author put the before journey instead of a?

GPY · Accepted Answer

It is not talking about any one traveller's individual journey, but the "concept" of the journey. As such, "... by sea from London to California" defines it specifically enough to justify "the".

Reegis · Answer

Okaaaay, this explains a lot. Could you please give me a few examples where we use a definite article because of the "concept"? I would really appreciate this, because I must say that I truly like to learn from examples. After reviewing thoroughly a few thousands examples, you start to kind of feel them. Well, I am still not close to this number but I can see very good results.

Btw. do you think that the above sentence with a journey would also be grammatically correct?

GPY · Answer

ReegisCould you please give me a few examples where we use a definite article because of the "concept"

Hmm ... somehow I'm not finding it tremendously easy to come up with examples exactly analogous to "journey". The best I can come up with right now is something like "The drink of tea is most often made from the dried leaves of the tea plant". It is not talking about a specific drink (e.g. glass/cup) of tea, but the drink in general. Contrast, say, "The drink of tea quenched my thirst", which means a specific drink (e.g. glass/cup) which must be known/identified within the context.

There are also cases like "The vole is a small furry rodent" or "The citizen of the US is a free man", where the definite article is used to talk about a class of things -- if you like, using a member of the class to represent the whole. This popped into my head, but I'm not sure on reflection how relevant it really is to the "journey" example.

ReegisBtw. do you think that the above sentence with a journey would also be grammatically correct?

Yes.

CalifJim · Answer

Reegiswhy an author put the before journey instead of a?

To my ear, 'the' implies that the author thinks he has some kind of tacit agreement with the reader that this is a common or usual route, that there is a regular desire or need for people (and goods) to make journeys from London to California. On the other hand, 'a' implies that the main message is the increased ease of travel, and the London-to-California route is chosen as a random example, so that with 'a', the route from Lisbon to Peru would have done just as well in that sentence.

CJ

Reegis · Answer

Wow, thank you both so much! I didn't know that articles might carry so much information and subtleties.
This forum is one of the best places on the Internet:)

If I could ask you in this thread about one more sentence which is surprising to me due to the same reason - the definite article used in it.

His car crashed into the tree at 100 mph.

Well, of course I can imagine that this tree is famous, or only one, or was mentioned earlier, but if we look at this sentence as just a dry announcement of this crash (and it looks this way to me), can the tree be somehow justified?

Mister Micawber · Answer

Reegisif we look at this sentence as just a dry announcement of this crash (and it looks this way to me), can the tree be somehow justified?

No. It must have been mentioned earlier or otherwise incorporated into the context. It would help if you supplied such along with your queries.

Reegis · Answer

Unfortunately I don't have any context for any of the sentences I put here. In my program I use to learn English it looks like this:

Sentence in Polish 1 <-> Sentence In Polish 1 translated into English
Sentence in Polish 2 <-> Sentence In Polish 2 translated into English
Sentence in Polish 3 <-> Sentence In Polish 3 translated into English
and so on... Just pairs of loose sentences out of context. In total, 9377 sentences.

But still I must say that already I have learnt 710 sentences (which means that I added them to my set of sentences that I review when the program says so) and such learning from examples is excellent. This is far better than learning individual words and I can see my progress on a daily basis.
From those 710 sentences I put here about 20, so it is not so bad:)

Looking on the bright side, I think it is educating for me to stop and ponder when I can use the given sentence and when I cannot.

Articles: The Panama Canal made a/the journey by sea from London to California much easier.

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