v Ukraine : na Ukraine

[Martin Votruba]

> "v Ukraine" vs. "na Ukraine."  A quick Google (na russkom) search
> shows 2.950,000 hits in favor of "v," and 2,890,000 for "na."

It’s interesting, Steve, that it is almost the same.  I wonder what 
the balance is between which of those hits came from Russian sources, 
and which from Ukrainian-Russian and even Ukrainian sources (in my 
experience, the coding of Slavic pages does not always match the 
language used in them).

My take on it is that the v/na arguments among the Ukrainians were 
induced by misperception.  While it is true that countries take _v_ 
in Russian, there is no overriding rule that “regions take _na_.” 
Regions, too, take _v_.

_Na_ with Ukraine, Rus’, the words in ?s~c~yna (na Novgorodscine) are 
isolated exceptions in Russian, not part of a non-existent living 
pattern indicative of regions.  The argument would have to be not so 
much that _na_ makes Ukraine a region, but that “no country is used 
with _na_, and therefore we don’t want it either” -- a weaker 
argument than the one against _the_ in English where there indeed is 
a pattern of sorts.

John Dunn’s comment on possible Polish influence may be quite 
relevant.  _Na_ also occurs with some place names in neighboring 
Slovak, by no means frequently, but more often than in Russian, it 
seems.  For example, it uses _na_ for Ukraine, as well as for 
Slovakia itself, and for no other country, but there has been no 
political or linguistic argument against that.

While _v_ started to be used in Russian print in Russia when the 
Ukrainian activists came up with that demand, it has reverted back to 
_na_.  At the same time, it seems that _na_ has taken root in at 
least official Russian used in Ukraine.

It would make sense that that would augment the balance of 
occurrences registered by Google, since references to Ukraine must be 
more frequent in sources posting from Ukraine, or in its behalf.

When I checked with the Ukrainian characters and endings, Google came 
up with 1,340 _na Ukraini_, and 84,800 _v Ukraini_; and with 36,000 
_na Ukrainu_, and 126,000 _v Ukrainu_.  The drive to replace _na_ 
with _v_ in Ukrainian is clearly slower with the verbs of motion.


Martin

votruba “at” pitt “dot” edu

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