"the"

Amending my diss. manuscript after the (?) proofreading done by an English-speaking colleague of mine, it's funny to see what being a speaker of a language that does not have articles (the, a) does to one's English. The large majority of the (?) corrections concern the article the. Such a lousy language, in need of all that small loose stuff when everything could be expressed with single words, even if longer because of inflection and all that. From OED: (institutional subscription I guess) B. Signification. I. Referring to an individual object (or objects). * Marking an object as before mentioned or already known, or contextually particularized (e.g. ‘We keep a dog. We are all fond of the dog’). 1. The ordinary use. [...] 2. Used before a word denoting time, as the time, day, hour, moment: the time (etc.) in question, or under consideration; the time (now or then) present. the while: see WHILE. [...] 3. Before the name of a unique object or one so considered, or of which there is only one at a time 4. With a class-name, to indicate the individual example most familiar to one, or with which one is primarily or locally concerned 5. Formerly with names of branches of learning, arts, crafts, games, and pursuits. Now chiefly dial. Also generally with gerundial vbl. ns. (arch.). [...] And so on... And it's not just once that I've written "his husband" and "her wife"; yet another annoying trait of English to distinguish between "he" and "she". I have a hunch that these mistakes are familiar to ESL teachers in Korea. Update. And yet another individual peculiarity, almost all of my also words were in a wrong place in sentences. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: academic