"The" Tarot?????

This is something I've wondered about before and just saw it put this way in another thread so I thought I'd ask.

Why do people call it "the" tarot instead of just tarot? Is there a reason?

.....just my strange mind going off on a tangent!

faunabay said:

This is something I've wondered about before and just saw it put this way in another thread so I thought I'd ask.

Why do people call it "the" tarot instead of just tarot? Is there a reason?

.....just my strange mind going off on a tangent!

Click to expand...

LOL!

You know, this doesn't happen in my native language. So I never call tarot "the tarot", not even when I'm speaking in english.

I have no idea why people do that. Maybe it's to make it different from the card game tarot? "The tarot" is the one you use for divination. "Tarot" is the card game?

Sorry, I guess I didn't help much!

I've heard "the" Tarot before but it is so rare that I had to stop and really think. Very few people say it. My guess is that it is just ignorance and the people who say it know so little about Tarot that they aren't sure how to talk about it properly of call it by its proper name.

Babs

That makes alot of sense SunChariot. Because like you I don't run into it very often....that's why it struck me as curious.

When I see it that way it seems to be people making it sound more.......hmm... I don't know, maybe powerful?? I mean to me tarot is tarot.....not any big powerful entity. It's just a tool to be used by us powerful tarot reading people!!

I would guess that it is grammatical. People may think of it as an adjective or adverb, as in, 'tarot cards' 'tarot deck' 'tarot reading'. When you say it by itself, it might make sense to call it 'the tarot'.

Or not. Now that I think about it, that wouldn't make too much sense either. Hmmm.

~Kimberlee

I never say I am going to read the tarot - I say I am going to read tarot.

Grammatically speaking we say The Tarot/The anything because there is one.

We say The Sun, The White House, The World as it specifies either one (in the world) or it is generally understood that we know which one is being referred to (i.e The Door is probably the front door, The Queen is probably Queen Elizabeth). The Tarot is generally undertood by everyone to be referring to one particular tarot. Like The Bible.

However, if you wanted to be more generic, you would omit the article, i.e Tarot is bad for your health, like Alchohol/Smoking is bad for your health. We say Poverty is depressing, Nature is beautiful because we are referring to the things in general, as a general idea...(distinct from The Poverty in Latin America, the Nature on the Galapagos Islands, i.e more specific)

Am I making sense? OK, grammar lesson over

You're making perfect sense Le Fanu. But what confuses me is when people use "the" tarot in a generic sense. I understand if I talk about a specific deck I say "the" Marseilles tarot deck. But I don't say "the" tarot when I'm talking in general terms about tarot. And some people do. (shrug)

It's not a big deal at all. Like I said just one of the strange "huh" things my mind does sometimes!

faunabay said:

Why do people call it "the" tarot instead of just tarot? Is there a reason?

Click to expand...

Good thinking there!

I do it sometimes, an d not at other times. Trying to figure out what I was going to say here, I thought at first it might have been for grammatical reasons ("I am doing some Tarot work today" vs. "Yes, I read the Tarot"), but I don't even think it's that.

When I'm talking about the Tarot, I'm being practical and immediate. When I talk about Tarot, I'm referring to an overarching concept that includes but is not limited to tradition and every deck that ever existed, not just the one I have in my hands at the time. When I talk about "TAort" or "the taort", I'm just being a Typo Queen.

The same reason I sometimes say The Cards. It depends on the usage.

For instance, there is a Type O Negative song that goes... "predicted by the tarot." Predicted by tarot doesn't sound right, does it? Predicted by cards, predicted by the cards....

It's all in usage.