Quote:
Originally Posted by Didace
That's why you need "the". If there were more than one you would use "a" unless there were additional descriptors that limited to just one.
I went to a bar last night.
I went to the bar on 5th Street last night.
Yep, or if it is understood by the reader which one is meant.
If there is genuinely only one of a thing in existence at all then it usually just has a proper noun (i.e. a name) which are mostly without "the". Like "Yorkshire", "Google" or "Lapka".
There are multiple internets (networks made up of smaller LAN and WAN networks connected together), for example the North Korean one, the ROW one etc. but if you think the other person is going to know which internet you mean you use "the". People not understanding this was the cause of the past incorrect convention of capitalizing the "I" in internet in spell checkers and newspapers as if it was the name of a specific thing.
One thing I do with beginners is practice getting them to ask/answer
"What colour is this/that ______?" as they point to stuff in the room. Then I get them to fold their arms and we practice "What colour is the _______?" which of course is only answerable if person asking has correctly used "the" on the assumption the other person knows which door, board, window is meant. The next step is to practice "What colour is a _______?" which only works where the thing has a typical or expected colour like "a banana", "a 20-euro banknote" etc. and the answer would be the same for some random instance (i.e. they can't ask "What colour is a table?").
Re: "start + to" or "start + ing". What rules native speakers are using is not something that AFAIK has been pinned down properly apart from what gregorio says about continuous tenses. If we look at google hits we can compare
"started to work" 159M vs "started working" 21M
"started to live" 18M vs "started living" 533K (so much heavier domination than in the previous case)
"started to cry" 6.5M vs "started crying" 7.6M so the "ing" form is slightly more common with this one.
and I've very occasionally observed new teachers sometimes correcting students when they say the "wrong" version for a situation.