Re: Why "the real world" but not "the real life"?

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

Funnily, I was thinking about this same thing as I've been going through
the Spanish Duolingo courses.  It seems completely arbitrary whether there
is a "the" or not, e.g., "the hospital" in American English and "hospital"
in British English.

I'd like to know what Larry and Paul have to say about this.  (The
https://lingthusiasm.com/ people may also have an answer.  If I have time,
I'll look.)

 > From: Brian <http://www.cs..edu/~b>
 > Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2022 16:09:43 -0700
 >
 > This question arose because one of the web cartoonists I support 
 > (https://giftscomic.com/), who writes in Russian and does her own 
 > translation into English, had the sentence "Real world is complicated" 
 > in a page she posted early on Patreon, and I told her it should be "the 
 > real world."  So she asked whether that was because there might be other 
 > worlds and you have to specify that this is /the/ real one.  And I said 
 > no, except for proper nouns, noun phrases in English always start with 
 > an article (or some other determiner such as a possessive), and she 
 > replied "if only it were that simple!"  I couldn't think of a 
 > counterexample, so she provided this one:  Why don't you say "the real 
 > life"?  And I don't have a good answer.  (I think it's always non-native 
 > speakers who first recognize the weirdnesses in a language.)  So, gang, 
 > especially @Larry and @Paul, what's up with "real life"?