articles

Dear teachers,

Would you please tell me why the writer of the following sentence has chosen these articles ?

"the Red Cross evacuated the refugees from Ø Sudan for a second time."

1) Do we say "Sudan" or "the Sudan" ?
2) What's the difference between "a second time" and "the second time"?

Thank you for your help and happy New Year to you all.
Hela

hela écrivait:
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> Dear teachers,
>
> Would you please tell me why the writer of the following sentence has chosen these articles ?
>
> "the Red Cross evacuated the refugees from Ø Sudan for a second time."
>
> 1) Do we say "Sudan" or "the Sudan" ?
> 2) What's the difference between "a second time" and "the second time"?
>
> Thank you for your help and happy New Year to you
> all.
> Hela

Hello, Hela.

1 The general rule is: "the" is not used before a country name.
Of course there are some exceptions:
- country names that are built from a countable, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland.
- plural country names, such as the Azores, the Bahamas, the Everglades, the Philippines, the West Indies, etc.

2 The general rule is: a / an is used to denote one element among a whole.
So "for a second time" tends to infer that there might be more occurrences than just one.
Contrarily, "on the second time" would mean that it's the last one.

Please note I'm still no grammarian. ;)

Happy New Year to you too!



Modifié 1 fois. Dernière modification le 11/01/14 11:10 par JRB.