Missing Articles

I am a grammar nerd. You should know this right away. I’m perplexed by a couple of missing articles here. I was already aware of the example involving the hospital. It’s a pretty well known phenomenon in Britain and its commonwealths. Here it’s, “I go to hospital” rather than, “I go to the hospital.” The article is missing. And the fact that I know the term for that word is why I am a grammar nerd.

There’s another one that bothers me. I’m currently applying for a job at the Gold Coast City Council, commonly referred to as “Council,” but not “the Council.” WHY!? I wonder aloud. But Theo is not a grammar nerd and doesn’t care, not even a little bit, just as you probably don’t. “I don’t know,” he says…”why?” (meaning why do you even care). I say, (completely incorrectly) “Because there’s nothing like that in American English…” (2 minute pause) “I thought of one!”

These are the silly mind puzzles I play with myself. There are examples in US English:

I go to school. (not really)
I go to church. (nope)

Theo chimes in:

I went to court. (he never did this either)
But this could cause one to go to jail, I suppose.

All these examples show an obvious trend. They are all public institutions! What is up with that? Does dropping the article give them more stature maybe? Or do people say them so much they decided for a shortcut by dropping the pesky article?

But then I continued to ponder and realized there are some examples that don’t fit this:

Let’s go to town. (if you live in the country)
I want to go home. (wherever that is)

Then I thought, well maybe you do this when there is just one of something in your life. Let’s say you do live in the country. The “town” you speak of is probably the nearest town. Even if you live in the city, you only generally have one home… one church, one school, etc. that you attend, at least.

So I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that answer for now, but ‘going to hospital’ still bugs me.