Characters at the beginning of a lot of words?

[mulligan]

Can a native Arabic speaker tell me what the character ال means when its in front of a word? (Or the end in this case)
The nearest I can get is that it means 'The'
Is this an essential part of the word or is it Ok to remove it?

Does this have an effect on the end meaning with regard to Arabic language/grammer rules?

Thanks in advance

[blastfromthepast]

Please read http://www.idnforums.com/forums/1048...c-domains.html

[mulligan]

Thanks blast..