Some nouns have to have “the” before it but seems like not all of them need it, so any explanations would be helpful!
edit: wow, didn’t expect so much traction on this. Thank you for your explanations! Interestingly, I’m actually a native English speaker but don’t really know grammar terminology all that well. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
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The quick answer is that some nouns aren’t *just* a thing. School and church are also activities. Like the phrases “I’m in transit” or “I’m in treatment”, they are shortcuts for saying “I’m doing the activities related to …”
Places that come with a schedule of jobs or tasks work this way. Everyone you speak with understands what those jobs are. For a nightclub, it’s not clear how long or when your activity will be. So “I’m in nightclub” doesn’t really work.
Usually, you will use “the” to indicate a nightclub you and the speaker have both visited — “I’m at the nightclub we went to yesterday”. It’s a specific place you both know. You use “a” to indicate one the other person doesn’t know — “I’m at a nightclub that I heard about from Jackie”.
Fluent speakers bend these rules. They overlap with eachother a little bit. But to bend the rules, fluent speakers know very well how other people will understand the words.
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