Why do older people seem so fond of using articles?

Facebook actually started as The Facebook. So that might be part of it.

I haven’t noticed this at all. I don’t do it. What makes you think it’s an older person’s habit? I’d be more inclined to think that it reflects a lack of understanding of the concepts of Twitter and Facebook and/or a lack of conversation about them with people who are familiar with them.

I’ve also never heard anyone say “take 5 freeway,” and I’m in Northern California. I hear “take Highway 101” or just “take 101”—or “take the freeway.” If it has a name, such as Nimitz or Almaden, it would be “take the Nimitz freeway,” “take the Almaden Expressway.”

Maybe your sample is influenced by something other than age and geography, such as culture or language group, or maybe your sample is just too small.

@Jeruba I’ve noticed different jellies on separate occasions doing this. I would guess that they’re at least somewhat Internet savvy to be swimming around in these here parts. But I guess you could be familiar with Fluther and not with Facebook or Twitter…

Yes, “take Highway 101” is how we’d say it up here. Down south, it’d be “take the 101”. As with all generalizations, it doesn’t always hold true. But we’d play this in the dorms to guess where people were from and it had pretty good odds.

@Aethelflaed That’s an interesting tidbit. Though I’m thinking my Uncle Peter wasn’t an early adopter.

I’ve noticed this.

My grandparents refer to Facebook as “the facepage.”

I’ve heard other examples as well.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Yes, but why?

Maybe we’re just too lazy to use articles; maybe articles were used to show something was important or a proper noun that wasn’t living way back when.

I’m 64 and I call them Facebook, Google, etc., so I can’t tell you from a first-person perspective.

My guess is that seniors who use articles in reference to those names, may have only heard them in passing, and therefore don’t have a visual recollection of the initial letters being capitalized. In turn, perhaps they loosely associate those entities with the internet, and use articles based on that association.

It can be confusion over if something is a proper noun or not, which can happen if you aren’t that familiar with something. When you put “the” in front of something, you’re saying that it is both the only one, and thus important, but not a proper noun, so it’s not the brand that’s important. Brands and brand loyalty do seem to be more important to younger generations than older ones.

@Nimis what @Brian1946 said.

@Jeruba and @Brian1946 I hope I didn’t offend anyone with my poorly-worded generalization. Not all older people do this. I’ve just personally noticed that those who do tend to be older. Wish I had drawn some Venn diagrams!

@Jeruba, @Brian1946 (and @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard) and @Aethelflaed Yes, familiarity with the Internet/Internetspeak is key. But I’m curious as to why it became that way in the first place.

@ddude1116 and @Aethelflaed I think you guys are starting to touch on what I’m trying to get at. I think it has more to do with the younger people dropping articles. But I’m not exactly sure what that says about us. Maybe laziness and/or brand loyalty…

[scratches head a bit]

@Nimis But we aren’t dropping articles. Not with Facebook or Twitter. Those are brands and proper nouns, without articles. And I don’t know that the highway example is really exemplifying what you want it to. Perhaps you have some other examples with which to illustrate your point?

@Aethelflaed I’m not sure what my point is. Just thinking out loud—without a lot of sleep. Probably not a good combo. Somewhere along the lines of some grammatical default (to use or not use an article) that speaks to how we view things in the world conceptually? Back in the day, people had a Livejournal. That’s a brand with an article, no?

Old people seem to use this when it comes to health conditions: the diabetes, the cancer (“She’s got the cancer.”). Of course, there is always “the gay”.

When I lived in southern CA for a brief time in the 90s, everyone would say they were going to take the 101. It wasn’t long before saying that I was going to take 101 (without the “the”) sounded odd to me. Two days after moving back to Massachusetts, I had dropped the “the” due to ridicule.

Trying to put myself in the shoes of novice web user, here’s a guess about the original question.

They hear people say “look it up on the Internet” or “the web”. So why not look it up on “the Google”?

When typing, text messages may have something to do with it. Shorten the message and save the space.

Not an elderly persons thing, it’s save space sort of thing.

“Take the 101” or “the 405” truly are SoCal expressions. I heard them myself when I was there. It’s not an old vs. young thing, though. (In New England we “take 91” or “take 84” or “the” when it’s a named road, such as the Mass Pike or the Merrit Parkway.

Take chill pill, bud.

@tom_g Yes! That’s a great (and much better) example.

@jaytkay Another good point.

@john65pennington A lot of it goes seems to go back to laziness. Ha.

@CWOTUS The freeway thing isn’t about being oldah or youngah.

Around where I live, older people call Wal-Mart “the Wal-Mark.”

Just remembered that example.

I must be old.

I’ve always wondered this, as many older people (also many ‘country-folk’) I know say things like ”the Wal-Mart” and ”the diabetes”. They often add unnecessary “s“es to brand names, too. One local grocery store is named “Giant” but they’ll say “I went to Giants”. I have recently caught myself saying “Barnes and Nobles”, damn it. I’m about to turn 44… maybe I am old.

It comes across as a lack of sophistication, but I really don’t think that’s necessarily true. I can’t quite put my finger on it, so I’m scratching my head right along with you.

In my family it was/is most likely due to my grandparents being the first generation to speak fluent English. A few of the Germans in my family are the funniest with their articles and “s’s”.

You’s guys want to go to the Ace Hardware on the way?

@SpatzieLover Every once in a while, when I meet a new person (these are Americans), I stop the conversation and say, “I think your parents were German.”

And it’s almost always true. It’s because they sound like my grandmother, who used to take me shopping at “the Piggly Wiggly” and send me on errands to “the hardware”.

Grandma was born in Canada and raised in the US, but her parents were off the boat from Germany.