Comment by SilasX
4 years ago
That’s not the standard your original comment was using (or you’re intentionally moving the goal posts here and abandoned good-faith). Again, to quote with more context:
> I say "I went to the store" or "I went to the pub" it's somewhere we both go or experience or have an expectation of going or experiencing, no further introduction needed. If we both go to the same conservatory then "the conservatory" would work,
Native speakers say “the store” even when there’s no expectation that a) I know which store they mean, or b) I go there myself or will in the future. ie, the standard you use for deciding whether “the” would work in the conservatory example.
Even under your new standard, you should say that “the conservatory” is fine as long as the listener “goes/has gone to conservatories”.
Finally, in case it matters: yes, I have had native speakers (my parents) say “the store” even when I (also a native speaker) didn’t go shopping at all, being too young to do it. (This is why oh-so-clever rhetorical questions should be used with caution.)
> (or you’re intentionally moving the goal posts here and abandoned good-faith)
That's the end of our conversation, we're discussing grammar and its colloquial use, not anything that requires "good faith argumentation". Inane.
Every conversation requires good-faith, charitable interpretation of what others are saying. I don't know how to interpret your remark, in its original context, as good faith. I said nothing that could reasonably be interpreted as requiring that native speakers "not go shopping". If you were actually interested in a meaningful exchange of ideas, you would have given a more substantive reply than that one.
I agree that if you're not going to take the discussion seriously, you probably shouldn't join it -- it just makes HN worse. Strawman argumentation doesn't suddenly become okay just because "hey man, we were just discussing grammar and its colloquial use", as if it's somehow okay to deliberately misinterpret someone and waste their time in that case.