View Single Post
  #2 (permalink)  
Unread Mar 25th, 2011, 05:20 am
susan53 susan53 is offline
Sue
 
Join Date: Oct 8th, 2006
Location: Milan
Posts: 1,406
susan53 is on a distinguished road
Default Re: definitive article + instruments

Play guitar is now much more common in both US and UK English . If you search the British National Corpus you find :

play guitar : 27 examples
play the guitar : 16 examples


Google, on the other hand, brought up :
play guitar : 12,700,000 results
play the guitar : 3,400,000 results


Here are some examples of "play guitar" from British English (from the BNC)

ART 1355 I'm learning to play guitar and I like Johnny Marr's style.

AT1 1571 If you are the singer and guitarist it is difficult trying to remember the words, play guitar at the same time and think of something witty to say between the songs,’ he says.

AT1 1971 In some ways I wish I had something to fall back on but I wanted to play guitar in a band, not waste time at university.’

C9J 1892 I've got nothing against keyboards, in fact I love keyboard music, but if you want to play guitar you should buy a guitar that was made to be played like a guitar.

C9K 22 WHAT'S NEW News & New Products Memories of Semie Moseley, and the chance to play guitar for a worthy cause.

PS - It's the definite article, not the definitive article - and in this case it certainly wasn't definitive
__________________
An ELT Notebook
The DELTA Course
Reply With Quote