> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago... >> But that's not what happened here It is, isn't it? In 1991 it became Ukr

> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago... >> But that's not what happened here It is, isn't it? In 1991 it became Ukraine. I don't recall even being aware of the issue around the definite article until after the Russian invasion, sorry. But throughout my childhood when it was part of the USSR, it was "The Ukraine". These ingrained speech patterns are very hard to change on a dime, hence my comments about the slowness to change a language culture. People get irritated with antagonistic correction, and you'll probably only succeed in cementing resistance to change that way, especially when no slight was originally intended. If you could read minds then maybe you're entitled to declare the poster's intent was to "dehumanize". The first time I heard an English-speaker use a new pronunciation for Ukraine's capital, it was from a SW engineering manager that just returned from a visit there and had the whiff of some idiot returning from vacation in Mexico who henceforth insisted on saying "Mehico". I'm using my own ignorance as an example of why you can't simply impute malice or an urge to "dehumanize". I'm also suggesting that your tactic is simply counterproductive. I'll let you have the last word.