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ESL forum >
Ask for help > Articles
Articles
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Anna P
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Articles
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Articles are not easy as they seem to be. I am having a hard time preparing an OE - I �ve been working on it since Saturday! First, I �m using size 3 for the questions but in the preview the letters are huge. I deleted, wrote again and still the same problem. I �ll keep trying to solve this problem.
My question for you is a sentence I made because one of my professors had a house near Lake Placid.
Dr. Smith has a house in the Adirondacks near no article Lake Placid.
However, in the examples, I wrote that we use THE before geographical nouns - rivers, mountains... so, why no article before Lake Placid? The easier way is to remove the sentence but I �m curious.
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9 May 2011
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ueslteacher
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Just a rule: Lake Baikal / Baikal, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Crater Lake, Utah Lake, Lake Geneva, Great Pond. But: the Great Salt Lake, the Great Lakes (5 lakes). Sophia |
9 May 2011
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sirhaj
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Lake Placid appears to be a proper noun already ( it has a specific name), thus we do not use "the" since the nature of the noun is already specific. "The"for "the tallest mountain", "the blue lake" and "the well-known city", we do not use "the" when we refer to something in a specific manner, such as " Mount Everest", " Ontario Lake" and " New York City", if place the word "the" before this noun, they appear to be weird.
Sincerely,
Sirhajwan
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10 May 2011
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Anna P
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 Thanks a lot, Sophia and Sirhajwan!
Articles are really more complicated than I though. We use THE for mountain ranges, but not for mountains; for rivers but not for lakes... not counting the exceptions!
Now I can use Dr. Smith �s lovely cabin in my sentence. I went there in the Fall when the leaves were all shades of gold, red, orange and brown. So beautiful!
Thanks again,
Anna |
10 May 2011
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franzjosefaut
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Hey Anna. Here �s the scoop:
Rules are good - knowledge is better.
Neither rules nor explanations make sense when the whole topic is missed.
Your sentence:
�Dr. Smith has a house in the Adirondacks near no article Lake Placid. �
Clearly no article with Lake Placid, like Sirhajwan already explained.
However, the situation is different with �Adirondacks �.
If Adirondacks is a town or village or such, there is no article, just like with Lake Placid.
The preposition �near � leaves another option: �Adirondacks � could be plural and thus describe an area near Lake Placid like �The Black Hills � in South Dakota or �The Everglades in Florida �.
I have been all over the USA, but never managed to visit (the?) Adirondacks.
I googled �Adirondacks � and found out that �Adirondack � is one of the oldest state parks in the USA. I can �t find conclusive answers, whether it can be referred to as �Andirondacks �, but that would be the only option to use �the Andirondacks �.
Using the correct name for the park �Andirondack � does not use a �the �.
Example: I have a cabin in Yellowstone National Park �.
Back to your sentence:
If Dr. Smith has a house in the Andirondacks, I presume it is not in the state park, and thus, �Andirondacks � probably referrs to a mountain range, like �the Rockies �. It is, after all, part of the famous �Appalachians!
Hope this is helpful:
Greetings, Franz
I am not on eslprintables too often.
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10 May 2011
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franzjosefaut
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One more thing:
Lake Placid can have two meanings: the lake or the city/town.
Either way, they are proper nouns.
Greetings, once more,
Franz
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10 May 2011
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Jayho
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Hi Anna
I refer my students to here when it comes to tricky articles. Maybe it is of use to you.
Cheers
Jayho |
10 May 2011
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