L'article défini 2 / The definite article 2
Read the following sentences:
La tour Eiffel, la France, la capitale, le soleil, they all have one thing in common: they are unique. There is only one of them in the whole world. There is only one Eiffel tower, only one France, only one capital city in France, and of course, only one sun. When we want to speak about something unique, we use the article défini.
In some cases, like in the previous examples, the object
or person we are talking about is unique because there is only one such object
or person in the whole world. In other cases, it is the situation in which we
are or some characteristics of the object or person that make it unique, that
allow me to identify it. For example, if I am in a room with a friend, and there
is a book on the table, I can ask him/her:
Now it is obvious that there are more than one book in the world, but in this situation, there can be no doubt about which book I mean, because there is only one book in the room in which we are. In that situation, the book is unique. My friend will be able to identify the book and give it to me.
If there are several books on the table, my friend will
not be able to identify which one I want. He will ask me: “Quel
livre ?” (Which book ?). I will then have to give him/her some more indications:
So if we are talking about something unique (either because there is only one in the world or because in a particular situation, we have enough information to identify it), we use the article défini.
Here are some more examples:
Now try to do the exercises about the article défini 2 (printable - online ex.1; ex. 2). The exercises themselves are easy (all you have to do is choose between le, la, l' and les), but do them slowly and carefully, and even more importantly, try to understand the meaning of the article ("unique") in each of these sentences.