My wife, who is Japanese, has done an excellent job of mastering English and can even ennunciate the “l” and “r” sound properly. 
It was too many decades ago I studied grammar, so I can’t really explain when and why we use “a” or “the” except when it sounds right to the ear.
Is there any rule? It seems to me that most rules in English have more exceptions than uses.
It’s a definate/indefinate article issue. If you’re talking about one specific ball, for example, you’d say “the ball”. If you’re talking about a ball in general, it’s “A ball.”
So, it would be “Let’s play soccer. I’ll bring the soccer ball.”, because I’m speaking about the specific ball we’re to use for the soccer game.
But, it’s “When you go shopping, please buy a soccer ball.” I don’t care which soccer ball you buy.
Thanks, that all makes sense, but when she is writing, there often seems to be cases where these rules don’t apply.
For example, in your message, would it still not be correct, without changing the meaning, if it were, “Let’s play soccer. I’ll bring a soccer ball?” Almost the same meaning, yes?
It’s cases such as this that driver her (and me) nuts.
KlondikeGeoff, do you have access to a good TESOL book? (If not, ask your local reference librarian–he/she should be able to point you to one.) Definiteness is kind of a complicated subject (sometimes it’s not appropriate to use the indefinite article even if the word is indefinite, etc.), and having her go over their treatment might be useful if she wants some rules she can use.
Yes. As noted, it’s a definite/indefinite article issue. If the item has to be specific, then use “the.” If it doesn’t then “a” and “the” are largely interchangeable.
Perhaps this will help…
Here, King Arthur mistakenly uses the article “the” before “Holy Grail”, as he is under the impression that there’s only just the one. Had he known earlier that there were actually a handful of them about, he and his kn-ig-hts would have been on a Quest for a Holy Grail.
(Apparently God got it wrong too, which is surprising when you think about it.)
If your Japanese wife is still having some trouble with this, encourage her to adopt an outrageous French accent. This is useless for mastering the finer points of English grammar, but would be immensely entertaining for everyone else. And that’s the main thing.
Very funny and a splendid idea. I will suggest it to her at once.
Thanks, everybody, for the help. I think we get it. 
Not so fast – there are a lot of things that we take for granted in English, too, about when we chose to use articles, period.
An easy, everyone-knows-this-one example: In the United States, we’d say, “I’ve gotta go to the hospital.” And, yeah, you should teach her the abhorrent “gotta” construction because she’ll hear it anyway. Our southern border friends (the Canadians, and that’s not a typo), though, would typically say “I have to go to hospital” without any article. Or compare in US English usage, “I go to school.” Where’s the logic in the difference?
Are there articles in Japanese? They may be used differently, too. Some foreign languages (Spanish comes to my mind) will use the article in places we don’t in English, and omit it in places where we’d use it in English. For example, “I am dentist” is much more correct than saying “I am a dentist.” And the TV show “Law and Order” is called “The Law and the Order.”
And further, “The Doctor Gomez is dentist,” instead of “Docter Gomez is a dentist,”
And, of course, just for fun, there are certain conventional pairings of article and noun – for instance, one has a cold but the flu.
Take a look at this online pedagogic grammar that was developed for non-native teachers of English in Hong Kong by a group of us at Hong Kong University.
You might be interested especially in the section called “Using ‘the’ to point outwards” (the exophoric use of the definite article).
You’ll need to log in. Just use ‘Yung-yung’ for both user-name and password.
It seems perhaps you don’t need a password. Click ‘the’ on the scrolling menu-bar, followed by ‘Used for definite reference’, followed by ‘Using “the” to point outwards’.
Since your wife is Japanese, she would probably find this book very helpful, either in the original Japanese or English. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the only book specifically devoted to this topic, which is far more complicated than “definite/ indefinite” article.
I’d agree that you need a grammar book for good examples but basically it comes down to this.
a/an - used with singular countable nouns where we either don’t know which or it is not important which.
the - is used with singular or plural countable nouns and uncountable nouns where there is only one or there is shared knowledge between the interlocutirs ie they know which.
no article - is used with plural countable nouns or uncountable nouns whenwe are talking in general, we either don’t know which or it is not important which.
Then there are alos rules such as The with rivers, oceans etc. but not with lakes, The with mountain ranges but not individual peaks, THe with official country names and ‘plural’ countries but not with the comman name (think The People’s Republic of CHina, but X China, THe Netherlands but France.), THe with mnewspapers but nothing with magazines etc.
In the soccer ball example I understand that with ‘a soccer ball’ you have a chice of balls or you don’t know which one, with ‘the soccer ball’ you only have one and you both know which one. Very often you see the article change as a conversation continues and both parties have the same information.
Most people think that cats and dogs hate each other. (no articles, in general)
I have 2 cats and a dog. (First time I’ve mentioned them)
The dog lets the two cats … (know we both know which animals I’m cat talking about).
Take a pile of coloured pens or pencils ask you wife to pick up
a pen, a red pen, the blue pen (if you have more than one blue pen add details between the yellow pen and the green pen), pick up the red pen again etc.
This should bring home in a real way the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’ for specific and non specific.
Ah, not only are there no articles in Japnese, but not even plurals. The grammar is generally like Latin with subject first and verb at the end. I can’t help but think that English may be one of the more complex languages. It has to be learned “by ear.” I believe.
Anyhow, many thanks to all the posters who have provided a wealth of good information and resources. The link to Three Little Words shows it is no longer in print, but I am going to try to find a used copy somewhere. It will either educate us or confuse us more.
In learning German, we are taught to memorize which definite article to use with each noun as we learn them(der, die, das, den, dem, des). Sometimes the best way is to learn them idiomatically.
<Python hijack>
Of course, in the next cut, you see the French Taunter snickering to his comrades, “I told him we already got one!” snigger
So in actuality, God and Author were right, but Arthur didn’t knowhis chain was being yanked.
</Python hijack>
Actually, there are pluarl pronouns. And, the only similarity between Japanese and Latin is the usual word order. Japanese verbs generally only have four conjucations (past-positive, past-negative, present-positive and present-negative), for instance. As well, the parts-of-speech tags that Japanese has means that you can [generally] completely scramble the order of the words without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Yes, I was making a joke of course: pretending that the French soldier’s surprising claim was actually correct.
I used to work as a writing tutor at a US college, and a couple of my favorite experiences involved Japanese exchange students. One of them, a brilliant film studies student, had a masterful command of academic English, except that articles baffled him. He just left them out, and while he was aware that he needed to put them in some places, he had no idea where.
My job, of course, was to explain grammatical principles to students, and for the most part I rocked at my job. But I was gobsmacked by this simple question, and had to spend awhile researching the answer.
In most cases where you can choose “a” or “the,” there’s a subtle difference in meaning.
Does that make sense?
Daniel