Helping out a native speaker :)

I participate in a forum called WordReference, it's an excellent spot for solving any doubts you may have since there are lots of natives speakers around the globe constantly looking at the forums and providing help.

Right there, to my surprise there was a question from a native speaker, as follows:

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Hi everyone, here is my sentence:

The Ganges, the Sahara, the Black Sea….you can feel the presence of these places just through their names.

Is there any way you could improve this sentence in terms of expression, vocab, grammer etc? I'm especially concerned with the expression 'feel the presence' as well as the Ganges, the Sahara, the Black sea (3 'the'-s in a row)

Any suggestion would be welcome.Thank you.

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The sequence of the thread was:

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Kate,

First of all, to me, the sentence is perfect, and it reminds me of a sightly literary text.

I don't know exactly what you want to achieve, but I'll try to give some suggestions:

1) It is just a matter of hearing of the Ganges, the Sahara, and the Black Sea to fancy yourself as though you were right there.

2) By hearing the names of the Ganges, the Sahara, and the Black Sea you promptly / immediately imagine yourself present in such places.

3) You need no more than hearing of the Ganges, the Sahara, and the Black Sea to experience the sensation of being there.

I think you cannot eliminate the definite articles 'the' in these sentences, because in English this article is used before certain proper names of seas, rivers, groups of islands, chains of mountains, plural names of countries, deserts, etc:

- the Arctic
- the Alps
- the Antarctic (both land and sea)
- the Netherlands
- the Gobi Desert
- the Atlantic
- the U.S.A.

I hope it helps, best regards!

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Then:

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Great help, Marcos : )
Thank you so much. I think I'll try to find a way to mix your third sentence with my original one and come up with something better...

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Some learners of English do not believe that much in themselves when they need to interact with native speakers. However, as well as we have troubles with our mother tongues, so do they. When we fiercely study a foreign language, however, there are times we find out we are able to help natives of that language, what it's natural to me once we hardly ever study our own languages with due dedication.

As a student of a foreign language, believe in you :)

Source: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1745842