Exercise 9. Fill in the articles in the text and explain your choice

 

Letter, ___Van Helsing to ___Mrs. Harker.

 

“24 September.

(Confidence)

“Dear ___Madam, —

“I pray you to pardon my writing, and that I sent to you the sad news of ___Miss Lucy Westenra’s death. By the kindness of ___Lord Godalming, I am empowered to read her letters and papers, for I am deeply concerned about certain matters vitally important. In them I find some letters from you, which show how great friends you were and how you love her. Oh, __Madam Mina, by that love, I implore you, help me. It is for others’ good that I ask — to redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible troubles — that may be greater than you can know. May it be that I see you? You can trust me. I am a friend of __Dr. John Seward and of ___ kind Lord Godalming (that was ___Arthur of ___Miss Lucy). I must keep it private for the present from all. I should come to Exeter to see you at once if you tell me I am privileged to come, and where and when. I implore your pardon, madam. I have read your letters to ___ poor Lucy, and I know how good you are and how your husband suffered at the hands of ____ certain Count Dracula; so I pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not, lest it may harm. Again I beg your pardon, and forgive me.

Van Helsing.”

[abridged from Dracula, by Bram Stoker]

 

EXERCISE 10. Read these names of historical figures. Choose three of them, read up about them and make your own contrasted examples to illustrate the use of articles with personal names. You may also choose other famous people you find inspiring.

Scientists		Scholars
Isaac Newton	ˈaɪzək ˈnjuːtn	Confucius	kənˈfjuːʃəs
Albert Einstein	ˌælbət ˈaɪnstaɪn	Socrates	ˈsɒkrətiːz
Ste‧phen Haw‧king	ˈstiːvən ˈhɔːkɪŋ	Plato	ˈpleɪtəʊ
Marie Curie	ˈmɑːri ˈkjʊəri	Aristotle	ˈærəstɒtl
Leonardo da Vinci	liːəˌnɑːdəʊ də ˈvɪntʃi	Pythagoras	paɪˈθæɡərəs
Inventors		Explorers
Johannes Gutenberg	jəʊˈhænəsˌɡuːtənˈbɜːɡ	Vasco da Gama	ˈvæskəʊ də ˈɡɑːmə
Alfred Nobel	ˈælfrɪd nəʊˈbel	Roald Amundsen	ˈrəʊəld ˈæməndsən
the Wright Brothers	ðə ˈraɪt ˈbrʌðəz	Ferdinand Magellan	ˈfɜːdənænd məˈɡelən
Carl Benz	ˈkɑːl ˈbenz	Marco Polo	ˈmɑːkəʊ ˈpəʊləʊ
Alexander Graham Bell	ˌælɪɡˈzɑːndə ˈɡreɪəm ˈbel	Christopher Columbus	ˈkrɪstəfə kəˈlʌmbəs
Composers		Artists
Johannes Brahms	jəʊˈhænəs brɑːmz	Pablo Picasso	ˈpæbləʊ pɪˈkæsəʊ
Johann Sebastian Bach	ˈjəʊhæn səˈbæstiən ˈbɑːk	Vincent Van Gogh	ˈvɪnsənt væn ˈɡəʊ
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky	ˈpiːtə ˈɪlɪtʃ  tʃaɪˈkɒfski	Claude Monet	ˈklɔːd ˈmɒneɪ
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	ˈwʊlfɡæŋ æməˈdeɪəs ˈməʊtsɑːt	Michelangelo	ˌmaɪkəlˈændʒələʊ
Frédéric Cho‧pin	ˈfredərɪk ˈʃəʊpæn	Frida Kahlo	ˈfriːdə ˈkɑːləʊ
Authors		Historic Leaders
Jane Austen	ˈdʒeɪn ˈɒstɪn	Julius Caesar	ˈdʒuːliəs ˈsiːzə
Somerset Maugham	ˈsʌməset ˈmɔːm	Genghis Khan	ˌdʒeŋɡəs ˈkɑːn
Agatha Christie	ˈæɡəθə ˈkrɪsti	Abraham Lincoln	ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən
Charlotte Brontë	ˈʃɑːlət ˈbrɒnti	Margaret Thatcher	ˈmɑːɡrət ˈθætʃə
Geoffrey Chaucer	ˈdʒefri ˈtʃɔːsə	Napoleon	nəˈpəʊliən

 

Unit 5. Articles with geographical names

Geographical names show a conventional use of articles, that is, most geographical names follow the traditional rules codified in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Newly coined geographical names join the existing thematic groups based on their similarity.

 

NO ARTICLE IS TRADITIONALLY USED WITH:

 

1) names of continents: Africa, Eurasia, Europe, Asia, South America, North America, Australia, Antarctica.

 

BUT: the Arctic and the Antarctic are substantivized adjectives and mean geographical areas, not continents.

 

2) names of countries and most provinces if the name is singular and has no common nouns in it: China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Bavaria, Cornwall.

 

BUT: the Congo, the Vatican OR Vatican City.

 

3) names of cities, towns, villages, and parts of cities: New York, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Newark, Longville.

 

BUT: the Hague, D.C. ['di:'si:] – the District of Columbia.

 

4) names of lakes if the element ‘lake’ is present: Lake Baikal, Michigan Lake, Loch Ness.

 

BUT: the Great Salt Lake, the Lake of the Woods; the Great Lakes.

 

5) names of individual peaks and hills: Mount Everest, Ben Nevis, Mount Fuji, Kilimanjaro, Etna, Vesuvius, Elbrus.

 

6) names of individual islands, capes, valleys, waterfalls:

Madagascar, Madeira, Greenland, Java, Cyprus, Hokkaido, Sakhalin,

Cape Horn, North Cape, Cape Canaveral, Cape Cod,

Death Valley, Silicon Valley,

Niagara Falls.

 

BUT: the Isle of Man, the Cape of Good Hope, the Ruhr Valley, the Nile Valley.

 

7) names of streets, highways, squares, parks:

Wall Street, Broadway, Main Street, 42nd Street, Fifth Avenue,

Route 66, Cabot Trail, Great Ocean Road, Pacific Coast Highway

Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Times Square

Hyde Park, Central Park.

BUT: the Arbat, the Mall, the Chuisky Trakt.

 

8) most names of buildings that start with a proper noun:

Lincoln Memorial, Harvard University, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral.

However, since origins of landmarks are diverse and they often borrow articles from other languages or have a specific history of description, it is always necessary to look them up in a dictionary.

 

e.g. the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum have their traditional articles borrowed from French where the word order is different: la tour Eiffel, le musée du Louvre.

 

NB1: if the geographical names that are traditionally used without an article are modified by the adjectives northern, southern, western, eastern, central, minor, south-west, Latin, old, new, medieval, ancient, modern, industrial, etc., the adjectives do not change the article.

 

THE DEFINITE ARTICLE IS TRADITIONALLY USED WITH:

 

1) names of countries, states and unions of countries that

 

a) have common nouns in them: the US, the UK, the EU, the UN, the NATO, the People’s Republic of China, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Czech Republic, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Commonwealth of Australia.

 

b) are in the plural: the Netherlands, the Philippines.

 

2) geographical areas of the planet: the Western Hemisphere, the Eastern Hemisphere, the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, the North Pole, the South Pole, the Far East, the Middle East.

 

3) some provinces: the Riviera, the Tyrol, the Ruhr, the Crimea, the Riviera Maya.

 

4) names of most bodies of water such as oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, straits, channels, canals, currents, bays:

 

- the Atlantic Ocean / the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean / the Pacific, the Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean / the Antarctic Ocean

 

- the Mediterranean Sea / the Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea / the Caribbean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Sea of Japan;

 

- the Amazon / the Amazon River, the Nile / the Nile River, the Mississippi / the Mississippi River, the Missouri / the Missouri River, the Ob / the Ob River, the Thames / the Thames River / the River Thames, the Seine / the Seine River, the Danube / the Danube River; 

 

- the Baikal, the Ontario, the Titicaca, the Issyk-Kul, the Victoria, the Dead Sea.

 

- the Strait of Gibraltar, the Strait of Dover (Pas de Calais), the English Channel (La Manche), the Strait of Magellan, the Bering Strait, the Dardanelles, the Bosporus (also, Bosporus), the Mozambique Channel;

 

- the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal;

 

- the Florida Current, the Japan Current (the Kuroshio), the Gulf Stream;

 

- the Gulf of Mexico, the Bay of Bengal, the Persian Gulf.

 

BUT: Hudson Bay, San Francisco Bay

 

5) names of archipelagos (groups of islands) and chains of mountains:

 

- the British Isles, the Virgin Islands, the Falkland Islands, the Florida Keys, the West Indies, the Aleutian Islands / the Aleutians, the Kuril (or Kurile) Islands / the Kurils, the Bahamas / the Bahama Islands, the Canary Islands / the Canaries, the Philippines / the Philippine Islands;

 

- the Himalayas / the Himalaya / the Himalaya Mountains, the Rocky Mountains / the Rockies, the Balkan Mountains, the Ural Mountains / the Urals, the Caucasus Mountains / the Caucasus, the Cordilleras, the Andes, the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Apennines, the Black Hills, the Berkshire Hills, the Highlands;

 

6) names of plateaus, canyons, plains and deserts:

- the Tibetan Plateau, the Central Siberian Plateau, the Colorado Plateau; the Grand Canyon;

- the Great Plains, the East European Plain (the Russian Plain), the West Siberian Plain;

- the Sahara / the Sahara Desert, the Arabian Desert, the Gobi / the Gobi Desert, the Kara Kum.

 

7) names of peninsulas: the Indochinese Peninsula, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Alaska Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, the Balkan Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula (the Apennine Peninsula).

 

8) most names of buildings that start with a common noun:

the Empire State Building, the Royal Observatory, the Leaning Tower of Pisa

the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Great Wall of China

the National Museum, the British Museum, the Tower of London, the National Gallery

the White House, the Houses of Parliament

 

BUT: Big Ben, Stonehenge

 

NB2: it is typically safe to assume that proper names built like of-phrases have the definite article: the City of Mexico, the Great Sphinx of Giza, the Great Pyramid of Giza.

 

9) names of the four cardinal points:

the East, the West, the South, the North.

 

BUT: from East to West, from North to South.