4 ms·

> Calling Ukraine "The Ukraine" is a Russian tactic... This is just wrong. If you search for the word Ukraine on the Russian government site kremlin.ru (there

> Calling Ukraine "The Ukraine" is a Russian tactic... This is just wrong. If you search for the word Ukraine on the Russian government site kremlin.ru (there is an English-language version), you will find that this word is used there without the article. I am sure you'll get the same results if you search RT's web site. The article isn't the Russians' doing, especially given that there aren't any articles in most Slavic languages, including Russian. It is a historical happenstance of the English language, probably back from the time when the name Ukraine was perceived as meaning borderland. People using it probably do so because they learnt the word decades ago.

dandanua 4y ago
Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. "Ukraine" doesn't mean borderland, it's another Russian attitude with the aim to humiliate Ukrainian nation. You can also look at the map and see who is really a borderland of the civilized world.
- azangru 4y ago
  > Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
  - dandanua 4y ago
    It's not bizarre. It's one of the many factors that has led to the genocide of Ukrainians. Little things matter too. Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
  - trhway 4y ago
    > It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context". The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в". >The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre. It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
    - azangru 4y ago
      > If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions. You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".

dandanua 4y ago

Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. "Ukraine" doesn't mean borderland, it's another Russian attitude with the aim to humiliate Ukrainian nation. You can also look at the map and see who is really a borderland of the civilized world.

azangru 4y ago
> Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
- dandanua 4y ago
  It's not bizarre. It's one of the many factors that has led to the genocide of Ukrainians. Little things matter too. Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
- trhway 4y ago
  > It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context". The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в". >The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre. It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
  - azangru 4y ago
    > If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions. You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".