German angle

[Mark Nuckols]

It's probably worth noting also "die Tschechoslowakei" and its fate after
the breakup of that political entity. There has never been a movement afoot
in Slovakia to get Germans to stop saying "die Slowakei," but given the
pejorative use of "die Tschechei" during the Nazi years, that has been
replaced with "Tschechien," as agreed upon (to my understanding) 1992-3 by
Austrian, Czech and German linguists and press agencies, and promoted by the
Czech government.

Mark E. Nuckols


>From: John Dingley <jdingley at YORKU.CA>
>Reply-To: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
><SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
>To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>Subject: [SEELANGS] German angle
>Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:01:18 -0500
>
>Hi,
>
>The thorny question of English "Ukraine" vs. "The Ukraine" and
>the equally thorny question of Russian "na Ukraine" vs. "v Ukraine"
>has been debated on Seelangs before. This time around however, the
>cogent points advanced by Martin Votruba and John Dunn have, to my
>mind, brought much clarity to the debate. At the last airing, I made
>the comparison with the situation obtaining in modern German with
>respect to certain names of country, and I think this is worth
>repeating as it may shed some light on the topic under discussion
>here.
>In German, most countries are of neuter gender and have no article,
>e.g. England, Deutschland, Polen, etc. A few are of feminine
>gender and are always preceded by the definite article, e.g.
>die T|rkei, die Schweiz, die Ukraine. Then there are a few pluralia
>tanta which, like the feminine, are always preceded by the definite
>article, e.g. die Vereinigten Staaten, die Niederlande, etc. Lastly,
>there are just a handful of masculine gender, which are also preceded
>by the definite article, e.g. der Sudan, der Irak, der Iran, der Jemen,
>der Oman, der Libanon, der Kongo, der Niger, der Tschad. (This list may
>be exhaustive.) Increasingly in modern German these masculine country
>names are being treated as neuters, e.g. Irak (for der Irak), in Irak
>(for im Irak), nach Irak (for in den Irak), das gro_e Irak (for der gro_e
>Irak). I do not know why Irak etc were originally of masculine gender,
>but the German list overlaps to a goodly degree with the English forms
>which had a preceding definite article, e.g. der Libanon, the Lebanon,
>and it may be that Martin Votruba's pertinent remarks for the English
>forms apply equally as well to the German ones.
>As far as I know, there is no movement afoot in Iraq, Sudan, etc. to try
>and get the Germans to use exclusively Irak (and not der Irak), etc. and
>perhaps that is just as well, since a) the wind seems to be blowing in
>the direction of Irak for der Irak anyway, but, on the other hand, b) for
>many Germans (many of German friends included here) Irak for der Irak is
>considered an abomination to be avoided at all costs. Mal schauen!
>
>John Dingley
>
>-----------------
>http://dlll.yorku.ca/jding.html
>
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