Ukraine/The Ukraine

[anne marie devlin]

Dear all
My interest is in linguistic variation and change and v/na + Ukraine and Ukraine/the  are both great examples.However what I'm preparing an article on at the moment is how the variable of v/na is being used to index political identities by those posting comments to online articles concerning the annexation of Crimea. 
I've just statistically analysed the data and preliminary results show , while indicating an overall movement towards v, that the choice is strongly predicated on political viewpoint. 
I'm presenting the paper at a sociolinguistic summer school in Dublin next month. If anyone's interested I'd be happy to share the paper after that.
With regards the use of w/na in Polish, a Polish friend related how the difference was explained to him in school. If the country used to be Polish, use na. Hence na. + Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine, but not Estonia. He could never understand why it was w + Siberia!
AM

> Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 12:58:02 -0400
> From: aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ukraine/The Ukraine
> To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> 
> That's "conservative" for you. BBC still says "Peking" while the US has gotten used to Beijing. It was the same story: the name was changed by request from the government, and it was awkward in the beginning but a couple of generations later it has become a norm. Trubachev's grandchildren will get used to it, if they are still in Russia.
> 
> Alina
> 
> On Jun 18, 2014, at 6:57 PM, Robert Orr <colkitto at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> > "Ukraine" had already become commonplace in Canada while "The Ukraine" was still almost universal in Britain, and in the early 90's, I recall some British scholars being surprised at hearing "Ukraine".
> > 
> > It was also in 1993 that I remember Oleg Trubacev expressing his displeasure, in a private conversation, at the "ухорежущее" nature of "в Украине".
> > 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>   options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                         http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 		 	   		  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                        http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20140619/da4d7e03/attachment.html>