Here’s the clip from the movie:
These sentences I wrote myself but the style was from Encarta (as I remember it). They use the article with rivers only in introductory sentence. The difference between “Russian economy” and “the Russian economy” I still don’t feel, maybe something is wrong with me.
@Sanne.
I don’t understand your point. Do you mean the Volga is not in Europe or what?
Sorry, sorry, Helen. I mistyped your name. 
Nasir, be careful with women.
@ Victor: By giving you the last word of the previous sentence and then after the full stop The Volga was meant to show that you need to put the ‘The’ there.
My intentions were good…
Victor,
There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just “the Russian economy” and not “Russian economy.”
Encyclopedias sometimes omit articles to save space. I doubt they practice this with the names of rivers, though. In any event, you can’t use that style in everyday writing and speech.
Here’s an example (however imperfect) that may help you understand what I mean:
Приеду поездом центральный вокзал понедельник ТЧК Нетерпением жду встречи вами ТЧК
This style pertains only to telegrams. If you start writing or talking like this on a regular basis, you’ll end up in a loony bin.
I see land, I hear rain, I smell smoke, I enjoy sunshine; Land is near, rain is approaching, smoke is rising, sunshine can be harmful: once the noun gets given a definite article the meaning becomes specific.
(Victor, if it is any consolation, I have a Czech friend who has lived in the UK for at least as long as I have, has a high-powered job and she still misses the occasional article. It’s part of her charm.)
Wandering off the subject, has anyone seen a film where Rutger Hauer speaks Dutch? Or has his entire film career been spent in English-language films?
Likewise, has anyone seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in a German-language film?
Does it count that I have heard Arnie speak Austrian?
People laugh at Arnie for he still can’t pronounce “California” correctly.
articles, gender, cases, …just part of the redundant junk code in languages.
And it is too difficult to adept these redundancies if such things do not exist in your mother tongue. Such as in my own language.
Steve, you are becoming more and more categorical with every passing day.
victor, it must be my exposure to Russian culture -
Steve, were you less exposed, would you be writting ‘the Russian culture’?
This is one thing that is not really explained to us when we learn English as kids.
–The Sea-- The speakers are not ignorant of the fact that there are many seas… Just the opposite! Implied: There are many seas, but I would like to point out -this specific sea-, it is the subject.
The context of the situation is what will tell you what is going on.
“Back in 1973, I was in the army. I didn’t really get to see any action, they just kept me in the recruiting center back in the states”
The speaker wants you to know that they are referencing the United States army… not the army from some other country.
“I want to talk about the environment. We’re dumping oil into the water, there’s pesticides everywhere, species are going extinct, rainforests are dying, and the big companies don’t want anything to do with it. There’s something wrong here, and we need to fix it!”
In this case, “The environment” is a concept, a symbol of the entire world of interactions between plants and animals, along with humanity’s effect on it.
Azurise don’t be such a radical. I even don’t mind to say it is ignorance.
To native English speakers: When all of you were a child had your parents tried to teach you in this way: “don’t use the definite article here, use there. Okay, right, use the indefinite article here”???
NOne of us, which is why I can’t explain the"rules" without going and buying a grammar book. All I can do is give you examples of phrases which a native speaker would use, and the context in which they would use them.
Excellent! Thank you Helen. This is exactly what I wanted! There is only one way: listening…
P.S.: If you ask me about my language’s grammar rules I could not answer these kind of questions. I have absolutely no idea. It comes naturally. As all of you.
There are many cases (like “tears in the rain”) when it doesn’t really affect the meaning if you have “the” or no “the”. Likewise, there are situations where “a” and “one” are more or less interchangeable (I have read a book by Chekhov, I have read one book by Chekhov). Usually, however, there is a difference in meaning between “a” (just one out of a choice of many), and “the” (one particular one, and speaker and listener are clear which one they are talking about). So we say: the Russian economy (the specific economy of the Russian State) but a Russian woman (just one of the many women from Russia).