Ukraine with definite article?

[Max Pyziur]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Steven Hill wrote:

> Dear colleagues:
>
> Perhaps I'm in a minority which still sees two ways, in English, to handle country names
> that apparently can have both a "latinized" form  and a "gallicized" form.  E.g., latinized
> "Argentina" (ending in -A) and gallicized "The Argentine" (ending in "silent -E").  I still
> remember the 1940s pop song, "Tangerine," in which the gal's name is rhymed with "The
> Argentine."
>
> In the 2 parallel forms, one notes that the name ending in -A (latinized) does NOT
> have the definite article, while the name ending in "silent  -E" (gallicized) DOES have the
> definite article.

At one time "Lebanon" was "The Lebanon"; how would that fit using your
rule?

> Same rule of thumb strikes me as relevant to the way that we native speakers of English
> may refer to the land of the Ukrainians.  My (Engl.) native speaker's ear tells me that a
> name like "Ukrain(i)a" would work all right in English, if one wished to use it, without the
> definitearticle.  And equally well a name like "The Ukraine" (WITH the definite article)
> sounds all right to my English ear.

Logical follow-through would then demand it be "The France" and not
"France", "The Maine" and not "Maine", no?  Sounding alright to your
English ear is more a matter of conditioning, then adherence to
syntactical rules.  Split infinitives and dangling prepositions may sound
alright, but syntactically they are incorrect.

Why not try something simpler - if it's a name of a country then drop the
definite article; if it names something (federation, republic, river) then
use an article.  With that in mind then "The Czech Republic", "The Russian
Federation", and "Ukraine" are correct.

Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com

> But what grates on my (Engl.) native speaker's ear  is mixing the two forms: "Ukraine"
> (ends in "silent "-E," but lacks definite article).  Just doesn't sound right  to me, as if it
> was uttered or written  by a non-native speaker  of English, whose native language
> lacked definite & indefinite articles.   (Quite reasonably, such speakers sometimes omit
> the 2 articles in their English usage, in places where standard English would retain the
> articles.)  Just as non-native speakers of Russian, etc. (including yours truly) have
> difficulty in Russian with pf. vs. impf. verbs.  And with many other  phenomena, as well...
>
> "The Argentine" &  "The Ukraine" may find a parallel in the 3 states just SW of
> Petersburg.  One says in English, I think, "The Baltics" and "Baltica" (given that the latter
> has a more specialized meaning). In the same spirit, perhaps "The Indies" and "India,"
> although these are really a stretch.   Further afield, although still slightly parallel, one
> finds "Slovakia" (lacks definite article) and "The Czech Republic" (has definite article). My
> point here is that even in these far-fetched examples, normal English usage cannot say
> simply "Baltics" or "Indies" or "Czech Republic" -- in each instance there must be a
> definite article preceding.
>
> If I looked far enough,  I might well  run into a number of exceptions. ("Sheikh of
> Arabie"?)  So maybe my instincts here are not as applicable as they first seem to be.
> I've been wrong before. In any event, I myself, in using English, will  probably continue to
> utter, and to write, "The Ukraine."   Also "The Argentine," "The Baltics," "The Indies,"
> "the Czech Republic."  It's a free country.
>
> Sincerely,
> Steven P Hill,
> University of Illinois (USA).
>
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