Do native speakers still say "the" and "a" word

They are used constantly. The use of "a" and "the" is integral to the English language. It would be a huge detriment to not use them.

Why in the world would you think that words in certain language are unnecessary? You’re learning a foreign language and you don’t get to decide what words to omit. These words have nothing to do formal vs. informal conversations, they are part of the language, period. You will sound like a stereotypical “foreigner” if you do not use “the” and “a” in your conversations.

“The” is probably the most used word in the English language with “a” being probably being top 5 if I had to guess. They’re necessary but we can probably tell what you’re saying without them. It’s just very obvious when non native speakers don’t use them/don’t use them correctly.

Tell me you're Slavic without telling me you're Slavic

I'm confused. How do you come to this conclusion? Why did you come to this conclusion? You can't seriously believe you can restructure an entire language based on the idea that you watch anime... Like, what does this even mean? Are you watching the anime in English or in a language (Japanese) completely different to English? And even then, what made you hyperfixate on something like articles? Edit: I used articles several instances in this post. Now I'm hyperfixating on them... Thanks a lot.

Yes. Have you literally *ever* listened to a native English speaker?

I think you would benefit from Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s videos on weak forms [[1]](https://youtu.be/EaXYas58_kc?si=p-xwiOORQgkFXWcv) [[2]](https://youtu.be/qlbGtEg68x4?si=2hAfWrZi8ekprZ2l). Even if it is hard to hear them, native speakers use weakened forms of a lot of common words.

If you're watching stuff featuring native speakers and you're not noticing any articles, the problem is in your listening comprehension. I don't mean to offend you - as someone who's spent years learning a second language I know that sometimes you just \*don't hear\* things. Words like "a" and "the" fly by pretty fast but they are definitely there in native speech. When they are absent it is very noticeable that the person is not a native speaker or really even a competent speaker of the language.

Tell me you aren’t native without telling me you aren’t native. Let me just frame this correctly, you are saying that the literal two most common words in the entire language seem unnecessary. That is how much these matter no you cannot omit them yes they are that integral.

Tell a British cook that his food is "Shit" instead of "The shit" and then come back to us. A movie is a bomb, or the bomb. Which one means it's a good movie, and the other a commercial flop?

The only exception I could see is if OP is consuming content that has AAVE, or African American vernacular English, a dialect that frequently omits articles?

They're fundamental English articles that we use dozens of times a day, speech feels stilted and strange without them, and a lot of grammatical nuance relies upon them.

They are a part of English, so we use them when appropriate. There are a few certain situations where we don't use them in the normal way, in order for the communication to be brief; some examples that come to mind are newspaper headlines, classified ads, telegrams (do those last two still exist?), maybe texting and other similar short communications. Also, English probably doesn't use articles as much as the Romance languages, for example, but compared to something like Russian, yeah, we use them a lot.

It’s a big giveaway that someone is not a native speaker when they don’t use articles even to the point that it has been used in satire as a shortcut to that effect.

Of course we say those words, though we don't put too much effort into saying them.

Yes. Would we understand someone who didn't use any articles in their speech? Also mostly yes. Nevertheless the and a are an integral part of the English language and not using those words when they should be used would make a sentence sound wrong. They are absolutely necessary for correct speech even informally.

Why would you consider articles unnecessary? What would be some grammar points that could be just left out in your language and sound fine when you hear it in every day speech and writing?

It's not about formal/informal. They're literally part of the language and they're absolutely necessary. They have a meaning, they're not just there for funsies. You can always tell someone's not a native speaker when they leave the articles out.