Learn English – “talk over the phone” or “talk over phone”

It's an interesting one.

Of course, the generally refers to a specific case, and a/an to a general case, so why do we use the in these phrases, where we don't generally care about which car, train or bus it is?

With car we would take it to refer to the car that person is most likely to use. If I called my girlfriend and she said that, then the car would mean her car. If I worked somewhere where people drove cars as part of their jobs and I phone a colleague, the car would mean the car they drove for that job. In both cases it means the specific car one would expect them to be driving. A car would sound strange, because I'd assume they would be in the particular car they are normally in. Even if I phoned someone who I knew nothing about, they might say the car because they are used to thinking of their own car as the car.

With public transport there's two slightly different cases.

One of them is that if it was reasonable for me to know they were going to use a bus or train, then clearly they were only going to use one, so the bus or the train is that which they ended up using.

Another is that we tend to apply a degree of synecdoche to bus and train (and likewise tram, ferry, etc.) where the individual vehicle applies to the transport system as a whole. This is why we often use on rather than in with such vehicles; when we're on a train we're on the train-based transport network in a way that "on a car" doesn't compare to (though "on a motorway/highway" does). And likewise this degree of synecdoche makes a particular bus stand for the entire mode of transport and so a bus becomes the bus.

That is partly because Bradbury didn't name the book, The Fahrenheit 451. He did, however, name other books The Martian Chronicles, The Halloween Tree, The Illustrated Man, etc.

There are many "bibles" (authoritative books). Bible comes from the Greek biblia ‘books', from biblion ‘book’. Refering to it as The Bible sets it apart from other (authoritative) books.

It is simple English grammar, not professional-level. When you're talking about a specific thing, you use the definite article the: The White House, The Oval Office, The Grand Canyon. When you're referring to a non-specific thing, you use the indefinite article a: a white house, a large office, a small canyon in Pennsylvania.

Not to say that articles aren't sometimes confusing; they are. You know how to use them properly because you've heard them used every day of your life. You know what sounds right and what sounds "off". English learners don't have that advantage. They have to memorize the rules, to which there are some exceptions, such as Times Square and Capitol Hill.

The tallest building in the world is in the United Arab Emirates, in Dubai, and is called The Burj Khalifa, which means "Khalifa Tower".

The movie Alien scared me half to death in 1979. Blade Runner was the best movie I saw in 1982. Lately, director Ridley Scott seems to have lost his footing with movies like Exodus: Gods and Kings. I wonder if The Martian will be any good.

Learn more about using articles here.