Usage and omission of "the"

Question

Can anyone please tell me if I can omit the in the following sentence? Is the in the following sentence optional?

• (The) villagers in this village are very rich because they use modern technology for cultivation.

And one more question, I was watching a cricket match and I heard a commentator (a native speaker) saying "The match is in an interesting stage. Indian fans are shouting for Virat Kohli and his team." Don't you think it should be "the Indian fans are shouting for Virat Kohli and his team." because the commentator perhaps was talking about the people present in the stadium. This is not the only case. Many times I have seen in live reporting and news paper reporting, news reporters often omit the.

Some days ago in a news channel a reporter was giving reports to his anchor saying "You can see people are chanting slogans in front of the parliament and police are trying to stop them." I think it should be ".....the people are trying to......" because the people in this case were specific and the people who were present there.

Can anyone please explain this?

Answer 1

When I say "The villagers in this village are very rich because they use modern technology for cultivation.", I mean 'every single one of them is rich', which I prefer not to say because how could I possibly be sure?

Had the commentator said "The match is in an interesting stage. Indian fans are shouting for Virat Kohli and his team.", as you think he/she should have, then the information he delivered might have been "I see every single of them are shouting.", which would have been a bit inappropriate because no one would want and there's no need to make such a strong, definite assertion.

Plurals are often used without an article ahead, whether or not you are referring to a specific group because you don't stress it's for every single one of them.

We do, however, put 'the' before plurals in such cases as

"I had to keep in with the people who mattered." (I did care about all of them.);

"Police and the villagers all unanimously ascribed the forest fire to thunder and lighting." (All villagers did it. The speaker is indeed making a strong statement);

"The villagers piped in drinking water from the reservoir." (All villagers needed to drink obviously.).

Answer 2

If you wrote "Villagers in this village", a native speaker would think you are trying to distinguish "villagers" from other residents, or villagers here from villagers of other villages. Let me try it with different nouns.

Dentists in New York are well paid compared to the garbagemen.

or

Dentists in New York are well paid compared to dentists in Detroit.

But I don't think you are trying to draw any sort of comparison; you are just trying to explain their prosperity, so use the definite article the to keep from seeming to imply a comparison.

Answer 3

The X means both that the speaker expects you to know which X he/she is talking about, and that it's possible in the first place for X to be different things.

The villagers in this village are very rich because ...

By using the, you're implying that something else could be very rich besides "villagers" or "villagers in this village".