THE
Articles in English are invariable. That is, they do not change according to the gender or number of the noun they refer to, e.g. the boy, the woman, the children
'The' is used:
1. To refer to something which has already been mentioned.
- An elephant and a mouse fell in love. The mouse loved the elephant's long trunk, and the elephant loved the mouse's tiny nose.
2. when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.
- 'Where's the bathroom?'
- 'It's on the first floor.'
3. in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person or object:
- The man who wrote this book is famous.
- 'Which car did you scratch?' 'The red one.
- My house is the one with a blue door.'
4. To refer to objects we regard as unique:
- the sun, the moon, the world
5. Before superlatives and ordinal numbers: (see Adjectives)
- the highest building, the first page, the last chapter.
6. With adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people:
- the Japanese (List of nationalities in English), the old
7. with names of geographical areas and oceans:
- the Caribbean, the Sahara, the Atlantic
8. with decades, or groups of years:
- she grew up in the seventies
9. Names of rivers, seas, oceans, mountain ranges and deserts (always in capitals).
- The Mississippi River
- The Black Sea
- The Andes
- The Sahara Desert
10.
Directions (cardinal points).
- the west
- the south-east
- the north-west.