What could be the most used word in the English language? It appears fifteen times in this blog post alone. It is used about 5% of the time. One scholar says its usage is ‘miles above everything else’. It has no particular meaning. And perhaps if English is your second language you’ve noticed just how frequently it is used. Have you guessed it yet?

It’s ‘The’. There are two main reasons for its common and frequent usage.

1. It’s short. Simple as that. Short and simple words are more likely to be used in any language. They are easy to remember and easy to pronounce – they require the least amount of effort.
2. It’s very important in English grammar. Very generally, there are two types of words in the English language. The first are semantic words – words with meaning; the second are functional words – words that function to indicate meaning in other words. Other examples of functional words are ‘to’ and ‘for.’ In the English Language, ‘the’ has gained particular ascendency because of its versatility to indicate subtle differences in the meaning of the word that follows it.  So for example, ‘Are you a teacher?’ means something different to ‘Are you the teacher?’

Really, all this explanation points to is the fact that context is very important and learning a language will never truly be complete unless you do as much as possible to immerse yourself in the contexts and cultures that it is used in. We here at TALK are particularly passionate about immersive and contextual learning – even if it’s is social distance learning. Our teachers are the best – a passionate group of educators! So if you’d like learn more about English and interesting quirky facts like the most used word, enroll in one of our courses!