Grammar ?

[ToadMum]

Thank you everyone for taking time out to understand my question.

I agree: If we are so confused, how can we explain it to a 10 year old kid.

The resource was from an exercise where we are asked to find as many adjectives as possible:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practice-Makes ... 0071745475" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The example was:
"The waterslides are fun for everyone" - The "the" here is being marked as an adjective.
"Tina and her little brother Travis planned a big surprise party" - The "a" here is being marked as an adjective.

They do say something about us and the Americans being divided by a common language, don't they? I've got the Spanish Verb Tenses book from that series - very useful for the Spanish course I took last year.I but very definitely a US text.

I would stick to English English texts tbh.

[piggys]

American spellings are causing a lot of complications with CEM progress too; especially cloze exercises.
Color
Organize
Favorite

[KS10]

Checked my Oxford Dictionary of English and it says that the can be 'used with an adjective ...', but nowhere does it state that it is an adjective.

[workingmom]

Thank you all.

[Catseye]

For all thoses relentless pedants out there-pleeeze stop it,I'm confused enough already!

[BucksBornNBred]

I have to confess I am not sure who is right or wrong on this, but just flicking through my 1995 "Correct English" book and it states under Articles (which follows on from the Adjectives section) "Adjectives include the articles: a and an are called the 'indefinite articles', while the adjective the, for obvious reasons, is called the 'definite article'."

Just saying ... (to be read in CBB Stephen Bear voice )

[moved]

Grammar is very interesting and different terms are used to describe different parts of speech in quite close languages. Get a linguistics expert in English to have a conversation with a French teacher of French, quite funny if you don't mind ducking occasionally. American English also has a different grammatical structure from British English and uses its terminology differently. The first known usage of 'determiner' is c. 1530.

When editing for both Oxford and Cambridge presses, I had to use different grammatical structures in each including, of course, the Oxford comma. Fundamentally, it is style rather than absolute along with many other elements of grammar and the terms associated with them.

We are creating a fixed system that can be tested when the language isn't fixed and will continue to evolve otherwise how could we allow those pesky split infinitives that we all love.

[moved]

organize is an acceptable way to spell in British English, however analyze is not.

In those pesky olden times we also used a 'z' when spelling, another of my issues when copy editing - all Oxford scientific papers had to use the British -ize endings. It changed my whole idea of British and American.

[KS10]

For all thoses relentless pedants out there-pleeeze stop it,I'm confused enough already!

When people go on about data, I end up with a headache. Grammar / language is one of the few things I enjoy discussing (not in a Year 6 kind of way though).

[BucksBornNBred]

I love reading The Pedant in the Times, though I rarely understand a word he is saying (having long ago forgotten the difference between adjectives, adverbs, subjunctives, etc), but I love his belief that English is a fluid language and that some pedants should just free themselves from the mud and smell the roses Though I am a stickler for -ise not -ize (we updated; the Americans stayed in the past .