Article (a, an, the) usage; British and American English

[Chronos]

I would think that “I’m going to zoo” would mean that the zookeepers have an enclosure all ready for you, and a supply of your favorite food pellets stored up. “Store” and “bank”, though, I’m not sure what the explanation is.

[Wendell_Wagner]

I wrote:

> . . . just before “school,” “university,” “hospital,” and “prison.” . . .

Cancel “prison.” That’s handled the same way in British and American English.

[EdwardLost]

@hibernicus

The use of articles in English seems to be one of the hardest aspects of English to master, for speakers of languages (like Japanese and Lithuanian) that don’t use articles. I regularly deal with texts in otherwise good English, prepared by [X-language] speakers who have professional qualifications to translate into English, where the majority of mistakes consist of incorrect use of articles.

This suggests to me that the “rules” must be so complex, subtle or difficult to codify that they can’t be summarised in a way that is easy for a non-native learner to internalise.

As others have said, if you are a native speaker, just use your native-speaker intuition (what sounds right to you). It is a very reliable guide - how often have you heard native speakers use articles incorrectly?

Years ago I attempted a rule for when to use articles for a Chinese friend of mine. I came up with something like this: Single nouns require a “specifier”, e.g. “the”, “a”, “this”, “that”, “one”, “which”. Exceptions are proper names (usually) and mass nouns.

Of course, that doesn’t cover the subtler cases, but I think it covered most of the oddest-sounding mistakes he would make.

[njtt]

@Captain_Amazing

But on the other hand, I’m going to the bank, to the store, to the zoo, not to bank, to store, to zoo.

That is the same for British and American, and I think it is because in those cases we are normally referring to making a brief visit to a specific place, not an ongoing state of being in or at somewhere. Brits would also say “to the hospital” or “to the university” if they were just talking about a brief visit to a specific one.

I think chappachula is right. The British rule is consistent; Americans mostly follow the same rule, but make an odd exception for “hospital” and perhaps (I am not entirely convinced) “university.”
Perhaps it is because, in America, your insurance company will rarely pay for anyone to stay in hospital long enough for it to seem like an ongoing state.

[Captain_Amazing]

Well, an American would likely say, “I’m going to college”, rather than “to university”, but the model holds up.

Maybe the difference isn’t the ongoing state of being, but instead specificity? I’m going to jail, to school, to church, to court, etc., because there’s only one jail, or one school, or one church, or one court I would go to, but there are multiple hospitals I could go to?

Because, in American English, you can also use the indefinite article, in “I’ve been poisoned, I’ve got to go to a hospital”, but there aren’t many circumstances where you’d say, “go to a jail, a court, a school”, etc.

It’s the same reason you tell someone to go to hell, rather than “go to the hell”. There’s only one hell, so you don’t need to distinguish it. If you were Chinese, you’d have to say, “Go to the starving hell”, or “Go to the bloody hell”. (Saying “Go to bloody hell” would be something different.)