this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
913 points (97.8% liked)
World News
32290 readers
703 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And The United States
What about:
Normal country names don't begin with "the"
"The United States of America" makes grammatical sense. "The Ukraine" or any of the above doesn't .
Except when you're from the Netherlands.
That makes sense, again, grammatically. The low/lower/nether land.
The Holland.
In Dutch it's just called Nederland. "The" is added when referring to it in English since it makes more grammatical sense in English. The Low-Lying Lands.
Ukraine is its full proper name, from the original name of Україна, which can be romanized to Ukraine.
To "Ukraina", not Ukraine, but that's just a minor correction.
The Philippines
I was being facetious
The idiot.
It's actually a really interesting but of english.
We include 'the' when the type of government or state is mentioned which is why it is just China but it's the people's Republic of china or in the case of a region, like the Cotswolds.
Ukraine was referred to as the Ukraine during the soviet Union as it was a region of a greater country. Therefore using the Ukraine basically diminishes Ukraine to a territory of another country which is sorta what they're fighting not to be.
The name of Ukraine is Ukraine. "The Ukraine" was a USSR administrative district. The name of The United States is The United States