Problem with 'THE'

'The' is used:

1. to refer to something which has already been mentioned.

Example: An elephant and a mouse fell in love.
The mouse loved the elephant's long trunk,
and the elephant loved the mouse's tiny nose.

2. when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.

Example: 'Where's the bathroom?'
'It's on the first floor.'

3. in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person or object:

Examples: The man who wrote this book is famous.
'Which car did you scratch?' 'The red one.
My house is the one with a blue door.'

4. to refer to objects we regard as unique:

Examples: the sun, the moon, the world

5. before superlatives and ordinal numbers:
Examples: the highest building, the first page, the last chapter.

6. with adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people:

Examples: the Japanese , the old

7. with names of geographical areas and oceans:

Examples: the Caribbean, the Sahara, the Atlantic

8. with decades, or groups of years:

Example: she grew up in the seventies

prashubk- Welcome to A2K!

First of all, the word "I" is capitalized, even if it is in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes people on the internet take liberties with the language, and use a small "i" in online writing, but it is not correct.

I really don't understand myself why the word "the" used in the first example, and not in the second. In the U.S. we say that "He is going to the hospital", while in Great Britain, they say, "He is going to hospital". When I hear that in British films it always sounds so strange to me. Just may be one of those peculiarities of the language.

I agree with Phoenix, and Contrex as well. The only thing I'd add, prashubk, is that in your example "office" is a definative place whereas "work" is not -- it could be an office, or a theatre, or a construction site, or any number of other places.

I doubt that helped, but welcome to A2K!

Tico - I am becoming more confused and intrigued by this entire thing.

One would say, "We went to the place where the work had been done". We could also say "We went to the place where work had been done".

It seems to me that the difference here, is when you are saying "the work", you are referring to a particular "something". In the second sentence, the word "work" is more generic.

One advantage to being a native speaker is that insticctively one just "knows" when something is right, even if he can't explain why it is right!