Why do some people go “to THE hospital” and others go “to hospital”?

Funny. It’s here in the US where I hear people go to hospital. In Asia, they go to the hospital.

Oh…
Maybe I was wrong.
Will they disallow the question?

I hear it l lot, usually by British speakers. I don’t know why, because I’m allergic to English, but it seems to me that when people say “Go to Hospital” the H should should be capitalized.

@mazingerz88 Where in the US do you hear people say go to hospital? I don’t think I’ve ever heard an American say that.

I agree with @Dutchess_III that I hear it from the Brits, or anyone who speaks closer to the King’s English. The idea of the capital H makes sense to me, that’s creative.

It’s similar to “I’m going to university” in the United States we would name the school, “I’m going to the University of Florida.” We would also say we are going to college or going to school, but not going to university.

Definitely a Commonwealth idiom. Even the Canadians don’t dump the “the”.

Just one of the many, many differences between British and American English.

To address your question directly, some people know how to speak the language properly, some do not. But it depends where you are and from to some degree. Some people in BOY-SEE say BOY-ZEE. Some people in Washington State say WARSHington, people from other places say WASHington. Some people say sigh-rehn some say sigh-reen.
OH! And here in Idaho, we say “go to the hospital.”

@kritiper I think those are more accent than dialect.

Similar to how when I was in high school, people talked about “the prom.” Now they just say “prom.”

Some people even go to a hospital.

Will people who think to capitalize “hospital” please explain their thinking? Or is it just intuition?

Intuition. It’s like they’re making it into a proper noun or something. I really can’t explain it. (I’m also terrible with English.)

I see, thanks.

It seems to me what they (probably British) are doing is more like the opposite of a proper noun. A proper noun is the name of a specific place. What they’re doing is using the word for a type of place in general.

Americans do it too, but for different words, e.g. “go to school”, or “to church”.

Omitting the article is an expression that usually implies going to a type of building for the building’s main purpose, as opposed to just going to the location of the building to do something else.

Excellent @Zaku. Good comparisons.

@Dutchess_III
What is your language of choice

American English. It’s not “of choice.” It’s the only one I know.

To continue with @Zaku’s list, in the US we say going to school or to college, but we say going to the university.

We say going to work, going to lunch going to dinner and and going out to coffee or going to bed, but we switch it up and and say going to the neighbors, going to a movie, and going to the symphony

Bottom line, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s nutty.