Ukraine with definite article?

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Max Pyziur wrote:

 > 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.

They're only as incorrect as we (the members of the community that
speaks the language) decide they are. And they were perfectly alright
for hundreds of years, until a century or two ago some "grammarians"
came along and decided to remake English in Latin's image. It was as if
someone suddenly decided that women's physiques didn't look "right" and
required the surgical addition and subtraction of body parts to make
them look appropriately masculine.

Well, this isn't Latin, and it isn't Russian, and we shouldn't have to
conform to some foreign idea (don't take that personally!) of how our
language should work. It's English, we are its sole owners and
operators, and we will continue to stubbornly make up our own minds what
kinds of words we want to end our sentences with.

BTW, "the Maine" does exist -- it was a 19th-century American warship. ;-)

 > 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.

Agreed, with the caveat that generics must be separate words to qualify.
Thus: "Eng-land," "Den-mark," "Nor-way" but "the British Isles."

I don't know how to account for "the Netherlands" except to speculate
that perhaps plurals work differently.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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