Speaking English: When to use 'THE' with places

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to be talking about the article

"the", the word "the" and when to use it and when not to use it when we're talking about

places specifically.

A lot of students find this very confusing and I understand that very well because there's

no real logic to it.

There are only categories, categories where we do use the word "the" and categories where

we do not use the word "the".

So, the first category we're going to look at is the category where we do not use the

word "the" before certain items, ok?

Let's have a look.

So, we do not use the word "the" when we talk about continents.

So we would say, "I would like to visit Asia", right?

Not "the Asia", "I would like to visit Asia".

When we talk about countries, "She lives in Russia", "She lives in Russia", right?

When we talk about states, "He's the governor of California", right?

"He's the governor of California".

I wonder if you know who that is, right?

Think about it.

"He works in Ontario", "He works in Ontario", which is a province, right?

States in the United States, they call them states, in Canada and some other countries

they call them provinces, right?

When you mention the name of a city, do not put the word "the".

So, "He visited London last summer", not "the London", "He visited London last summer".

When you talk about streets, right?

"He moved to Main Street", "He moved to Main Street", not "the Main Street".

Main Street in this case is the name of the street, ok?

So for example, here in Toronto we have another street, it's called Yonge Street.

So our school is located on Yonge Street, alright?

When you talk about mountains, "They climbed Mount Everest", not "the Mount Everest",

but just "Mount Everest", ok?

Also when we talk about lakes, we don't say "the", so you could say "Lake Ontario

is located in Canada" or "Lake Ontario is one of the great lakes".

Parks also, you do not use the word "the", "I love visiting Central Park" or "I love

taking a walk through Central Park", alright?

Central Park is in New York, it's a particular park, it's the name of a park.

So as you can see here, these are all the names of continents, countries, states, places,

etc. alright?

Where we do not use the word "the".

I know it's not easy to remember and it's, how can you remember?

Through practice, through a lot of practice and through looking at some of these rules,

ok?

We're going to come back in a minute and I'm going to show you a list of items where

we do not use, or sorry, here we did not use "the", now I'm going to show you a list

of items where we do use "the", ok?

I'll be right back.

Ok, so now let's go on to the second category of places where we do use the word "the",

ok?

So let's go through this list.

We do use the word "the" when we're talking about deserts.

For example, the Sahara Desert, the Gobi Desert, right?

You don't have to capitalize the word, the letter "t", right?

Unless of course it's at the beginning of a sentence, then of course you're going to

capitalize the first letter in any case.

But otherwise, if this was in the middle of a sentence, it would be read exactly like

this.

For example, "I visited the Sahara Desert", ok?

Also when we're talking about plural countries, now you remember before when we talked about

countries by themselves, we said that you do not need "the", but when you're talking

about plural countries, for example, the United States, then we do use the word "the", ok?

Another example is the Philippines, right?

Another example, oceans, right?

Oceans, we do need to say "the", so we say the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and

so on.

Alright?

We also use "the" when we're talking about seas.

The Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, right?

We use "the" when we're talking about rivers.

You don't have to use the word "river" at the end.

You could, for example, just say, "The Ganges is in India", right?

"The Ganges is in India" or "The Ganges River is in India", alright?

Now if we're talking about plural mountain ranges, so not just one mountain, in the other

example we gave Mount Everest, right, we said there was no "the", but if we're talking

about the mountain range, then we do need to say "the", ok?

I know it can drive you crazy, but you will get it.

So we would say "The Himalayan", "The Himalayas", right?

Or "The Alps", right?

Or "The Himalayan Mountains", you could say that, but you would need to say the word "the".

Whenever we're talking about large areas, we also use the word "the".

So "He comes from the Middle East", "He lives in the West", right?

That kind of thing, we would also use "the".

When we talk about a kingdom, for example, "He lives in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

Now they don't usually use the whole term, but that is the official term.

So if you're using the official term, then you would say "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

I didn't have space to write the whole thing here for you.

And if we're talking about famous buildings, you would also use the word "the".

For example, "The Eiffel Tower is in France", "The Taj Mahal is in India", ok?

So these do require the word "the".

The ones that we talked about before do not require the word "the".

How do we learn this long list of these categories?

Well, like many other things in English, it requires a lot of practice.

So if you would like to do some more practice on this subject or many other areas of English,

please visit our website www.engvid.com and there you can do a quiz on this and get practice

in lots of other areas of English.

Alright?

Thanks for watching.

Bye for now.

Good luck with your English.