The Broncks', the borough of my childhood, fades away

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Tue Dec 4 14:33:24 UTC 2007


At 12/4/2007 06:23 AM, Geoff Nathan wrote:
>I'm pretty sure that the arthrous description of place-names became
>un-PC about ten to fifteen years ago with the prescriptivist explanation
>that the use of the article conjured up the connotation of Colonialism.
>I do remember Maggie Thatcher referring to 'The Argentine' during the
>Falklands war.

Without any evidence or investigation, this sounds quite convincing
to me -- colonial empires referring to territories or colonies that
were not independent states: "the Lebanon territory" (Google Books
has "The extension in September, 1920, of the Lebanon territory to
include nonChristian inhabitants helped the French to follow .."; or
"the Yukon territory"; "the colony of Zambia".  Or Thatcher using
"The Argentine" to reduce Argentinians before undertaking the
reduction of the Falklands.

Joel

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