In my proofreading, 30% of the corrections I make are adding “the”, and 10% are taking it away. Most Polish people struggle with the definite article, but you can probably fix more of your mistakes by understanding how to use it correctly than by learning any other thing. So when do we use it?

When there is only one of something

For example, the internet. This is why we use the with superlatives and rankings. Warsaw is the biggest city in Poland and Krakow is the second because by definition there can only be one of each. We say a lie but the truth because there are many possible falsehoods, such as that the sky is green or red, but only one thing can be true, which is that it is the colour of smog.

When there is only one in context

I lived in Serbia for a year (yes, really). That’s not specific because a bunch of different years could make sense. But if I add that I lived in the capital then I should use the definite article because although there are many capital cities in the world, it is obvious that the one I am talking about is Belgrade. We often give the context immediately after the thing itself, for example “Do you remember the meeting that we had last week?” or “While Deng Xiaoping was the de facto leader of China, his official title was the Honorary President of the National Bridge Club”.

When something has already been mentioned

You might use a the first time you mention something, but if you keep using it, it will sound like you keep introducing new ones rather than referring back to the same. If I say “On Wednesday, a student and I had a meeting. A student suggested I write this article.”, then it sounds like I am not talking about the same person. This can create a lot of confusion for a native speaker reading it.

The rules above don’t describe all usages of the definite article, but they do cover the most common ones and the situations in which I most often find it missing. If you would like to practice using it, a good exercise is to print out an old email that you sent and try to correct it by applying them.

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