Sunday, October 8, 2017

articles - "Forgetting to take my ID to the bank.." - why THE bank and not A bank?


Here's a sentence that I don't understand. There's nothing before this example. This is the first part of this paragraph.




Forgetting to take my ID with me to 'the' bank is something that I am definitely guilty of. One time I needed to make a bank transfer urgently for my company, but ~~.



I have no idea why 'the' is used in the first sentence. Isn't it more right way that I use 'a bank' because the bank have never mentioned before? How is it possible to use 'the' in the beginning of a sentence despite it being the first mention of the thing to the readers?



Answer



You could definitely say "a bank" in the first sentence and it would be grammatically correct.


I think the difference is that saying a means that it's any bank in the world, while the implies that it's his bank where he has an account.



Forgetting to take my ID with me to the bank [that I go to] is something that I'm definitely guilty of.



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