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This must be an American thing; in Europe I've have never seen anyone use "the Ukraine".
by Stevvo 5y ago
This must be an American thing; in Europe I've have never seen anyone use "the Ukraine".
- pram 5y agoProbably depends on how old you are. I heard it called 'the' when the Soviet Union was still a thing (mostly when the Chernobyl stuff was happening)
- ginko 5y agoIt's almost always "die Ukraine" in German at least. FWIW, there's a handful countries with definite article in German including Switzerland, Turkey and the US: https://deutschtraining.org/deutsche-grammatik/artikel/laender-mit-artikel/ https://deutschtraining.org/deutsche-grammatik/artikel/laend...
- nautilius 5y agoIs there any (political?) pattern there? It's "Wir fahren nach Russland", but "Wir fahren in die Sowjetunion", Wir fahren in den Kongo" but "Wir fahren nach Kamerun".
- ginko 5y agoI don't think there's a reason, tbh. See the list I added to my earlier post. It's all kinds of countries with relatively little in common.
- nautilius 5y agoInteresting list. It really doesn't seem to have any agenda, I think it would be hard to argue that Switzerland or the Netherlands are somehow regarded less than Austria or Belgium.
- thenoblesunfish 5y agoNot as far as I can tell. Maybe you can squint at some of them and come up with a story, but in practice it's just another set of essentially arbitrary things, like the grammatical gender of the names of rivers, to memorize when you learn German.
- weinzierl 5y agoThe US requires an article in German because it is a plural (United States). Switzerland and Turkey require it because they are female. Ukraine is female too and therefore "die Ukraine" is correct. Most state names in German are neuter and go without article. Some state names can be used as male with article (der Kongo) or neuter without (Kongo). Iran is the most common example of this category, in the news "in Iran" and "im Iran" are both used frequently
- Koshkin 5y agoOn behalf of English readers I plead that this German article be replaced with something else.
- gre 5y agoThe article mentions that it's a Russian language thing. "na Ukraine” or “v Ukraine"
- daneel_w 5y agoYes, but how many native English speakers understand at least basic Russian grammar and know the history between USSR and Ukraine? I'd wager not even half a percent.
- Koshkin 5y agoRussian is ambivalent in this way. For example, they say "on the plain" but "in the field." It's just generally accepted usage, not a rule. Sometimes the choice depends on a local or family's tradition, even: some say "in the hallway" but "on the kitchen" while others would say it the other way around (either way they would never use the same preposition, strangely enough).
- dagw 5y agoI think it might be more of an age/time thing. I grew up in Europe and was taught that it was called "The Ukraine" in English. It's only in the past few years I've seen people switching over to using "Ukraine"
- Stevvo 5y agoI was referring to political commentary rather than the general population as that was the perspective of the article. In political contexts people choose their language carefully; if they are using an anachronism that is probably intentional.
- BigJono 5y agoI don't think I've ever heard someone say "Ukraine" in Australia. It sounds a bit unnatural to say with an Aussie accent. Just going to throw out some totally uneducated linguistics BS here that's just based on my own Aussie accent, but I think there's a tendency with Australian English to not emphasize long vowel affixes like 'yoo' as much (it's more like a sharper 'yu-'), and to blend them with the previous word if it's related. "the Ukraine" sounds very natural because it comes out like "thyu-crayne", whereas "in Ukraine" rolls off the tongue like 'inyu-crayne' which parses more like you're saying Emu Crane or something. Whereas if I put on an American accent (which might be totally inaccurate) it very clearly sounds like three syllables (in-you-creane) I feel like I have to make a very conscious effort to say 'Ukraine', which probably explains why it hasn't caught on here even though it's more standard everywhere else. This is one of the problems with trying to make language political btw. I very seriously doubt that any native Australian is saying 'the Ukraine' as some sort of pro-Russian sentiment.
- CRConrad 5y agoMaybe you're just too young to have seen it? The version without the "the" has only been in use for thirty years, and widespread use for less than that. I'd only ever seen "the Ukraine" until about a decade ago, and being linguistically conservative I used it myself until recently. (Very recently.)