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I understand that "the" and "that" are both used to refer to a specific subject or object. But are there general rules of thumb to explain when we should use "the" and when we should use "that"? Examples: Both of these sentences are grammatical, but when one should be used instead of the other?
The king and his followers visit many poor villages.
That king and his followers visit many poor villages.
At a very basic level, that is the verbal counterpart to pointing at something in order to focus another person's attention on it in particular, so that the person does not mistake something else similar to it for it, or so that the person understands that the one being pointed at is different from others which may seem similar to it.
If you win a stuffed animal at a carnival, for example, you might say to the carny "No, I want that one." and mean thereby that you want a specific one, perhaps the one next to the one the carny was reaching for.
The, in contrast to that, refers to a particular thing the speaker has in mind.The is not so overt; the does not direct the other person's attention towards something.
"The" and "that" share the same etymology. They both come from the same Old English demonstrative pronoun/adjective (Old English didn't distinguish "the" and "that", but that word was flected by grammatical gender and case):
┌─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┐ │Masculine│Feminime │Neuter │Plural │ ├─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┤ │se │seo │þæt │þa │ └─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘ Full table is available here.
So "the" and "that" came from merely one Old English word, just "the" from its masculine form ("se", which later turned into "the") and "that" — from its neuter form ("þæt", which later turned into "that"). Of course, nowadays that gender-based distinction is lost.
As for the modern usage of "the" and "that", this article says:
If we're talking not only about "the/that + <some noun>" usage, but also about other usage types:
In my opinion "The" is singular. The King is watching TV. Whereas "That" gives the idea of more than one. Which King is watching TV? That King (on the throne) is watching TV. Or if you only have one dog you would not say That dog is hungry (you only have one dog so what other dog could it be?). The dog is hungry would suffice.
Something that you might find useful is to think of the pair of words "this and that". Generally, when talking about two things, the closer or first one is "this", and further or second one is "that".
So "that" is used to distinguish two similar things from one another. For example, when comparing two cars: "This car is very affordable, while that car is very fast."
Your sentence "That king and his followers visit many poor villages" makes me think that there is a context to it that is missing. For instance, "This king sits on this throne all day and gives proclamations on how great his kingdom is, while that king and his followers visit..."
Like above, "that" would be used to specify which of two, or which of a set, and as such, it's typically used when turning to talk about the second of two or a group.
The seems to refer to All entity/entities being referenced. As in the example "The king" it is understood that there is only the one king, but it notes every (instance? example?) of kings which is understood within the statement in which it is made. "The leaders" refers to every member in a group of leaders, of which there is implied only the single group, at least in this context.
That appears to call out a particular party (size 1+) within a larger group, and splits them from the (desires, actions, etc) of the rest of the group, usually for purposes of self. For examples: That faction (of some group) wants (not consistent with the desires of the whole), or That one guy (out of potentially any/all guys known, or unknown) did XYZ. Others might have also done any of X, or Y, or Z, or even some combination thereof, but we don't care about them, because we are only discussing a single person and their actions in this example.
Truth be told, I'm just making this up as I go, so I'm sure there are all sorts of flaws people can find in this. Still, after reading other responses, this appears to be the best summation I can think of, at this time.
