Is "Kyiv" historically accurate?

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Prof Steven P Hill wrote:

> ... Some folks, myself included, still perceive the name "Ukraine" 
> (lacking definite article) as sounding ungrammatical in English, as 
> if spoken by a new expatriate from a land lacking the  definite and 
> indefinite articles ("the," "a").  Reminds me of the Polish-American
> writer Jerzy Kosinski, who in his early writings in English often 
> omitted those 2 articles, setting off alarms in the mind of his 
> (uncredited) editors, who had quite a task to rewrite Kosinski in 
> standard English.

It's worth considering here on this language professionals' list that 
much of our native intuition about grammaticality derives from 
familiarity -- if a construction resembles others we are accustomed to 
hearing, or if a particular phrase itself is in common use in our 
community, we generally consider it "grammatical" notwithstanding any 
logical arguments to the contrary. Familiarity breeds consent.

And that's why as an L2 speaker of Russian I encounter constructions 
about which I have no strong opinion -- because the depth of my exposure 
to the language provides insufficient data. If I had heard these 
constructions a few thousand times over the course of my life (as the 
natives have), I'd know they were OK, and if not, well, 50 years of data 
that don't contain the structure is a pretty strong indicator that it's 
ungrammatical. For example, grammar books and dictionaries offer the 
construction verb[past] + было in the sense "was going to, was about to; 
intended to but changed one's mind": я пошел было в магазин. But in my 
limited experience, I haven't seen it often enough to get fully 
accustomed to it, so I don't quite trust that it's OK.

Returning to the topic, I remember when we dropped the article a few 
years back it felt peculiar to me initially, but I've seen "Ukraine" 
tout court so many times since 1990 that I've grown accustomed to it and 
no longer look at it twice. I had the same experience with Beijing and 
Myanmar and Kyiv, and I expect someday I will with Sakartvelo.

-- 
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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