Sensei Michael

Answer on @Quora by Jim Gordon to Why is Lieutenant General a higher rank than Major General, while the rank of Majo… http://qr.ae/LZBDN

Answer by Michael Chan: "a" refers to anything of that type, nothing specific. "the" refers to a specific something of that type, nothing else. It is usually used when referring to something that both parties already know of. I am a vice-president in the company. In this case, I am probably one of the two or more vice-presidents in that specific company that we have been talking about previously. I am the vice-president of the bank. In this case, there is no other vice-presidents, there is only one, which makes me a lot more "big-shot" in that particular bank we have been talking about, than any banks which have tons of vice-presidents all over the place. What are some tips to correctly use "the" and "a"?

When I first arrived in China, we had to adjust to how some food have different Chinese names from the ones we are accustomed to, or even how we have become so used to the English names that we struggle for the Chinese terms for the food item. We found out that potatoes in Shanghai is not 马铃薯 but 土豆 (although the Shanghainese understood the former). It was also really hilarious when we wanted yam 芋头 (and we were sure we got the pronunciation right) but our domestic helper got for us fish-head 鱼头 instead. And since quite a few Singaporean dishes have turnips in them, it was an interesting occasion when we could not find them in Shanghai. We tried describing it to our chefs in school, tried giving searching for pictures, all to no avail. They had no idea what it was called in Chinese too, even with the pictures. It took one of my northern Chinese student Haylin to let me know what they call those things 萝卜. I went "huh?" at that. I knew 萝卜 as radishes, not turnips. It was then ...