[vinceguidry]

I think this comes down to the fact that English speakers don't consider their own articles very much because they're always the same. We don't have to put any effort into picking one, so selection is unconscious and automatic.

I recall Ukrainians objecting to the English-speaking world's fixation on calling their country "the Ukraine" instead of just "Ukraine." The propensity to just append articles to nouns to facilitate flow is hard to overcome.

[ghaff]

>I think this comes down to the fact that English speakers don't consider their own articles very much because they're always the same.

It's a little bit like how native English speakers tend to regard accent marks as largely optional decoration.