"the" before country name

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Mon May 12 03:12:06 UTC 2008


Ghana, I think, still goes back and forth. There are others. BB

On May 11, 2008, at 7:20 PM, Katharine The Grate wrote:

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> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Katharine The Grate <KatharineTheGrate at COMCAST.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "the" before country name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> People used to say "the Congo".
>>
>> But "the United States of America" is just the formal political
>> name of =
>> the American state, and the formal political name typically is
>> preceded =
>> by "the."  E.g., the Commonwealth of Australia, the Kingdom of
>> Belgium, =
>> the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union
>> of =
>> Soviet Socialist Republics.  There may or may not be a
>> corresponding =
>> country name that can be used without "the"; there was none, for =
>> example, with the Soviet Union (only Russia, which for political
>> reasons =
>> could not be used as such until the Soviet Union's dissolution).
>> =20
>>

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