"The" Philippines

[Jonathan Lighter]

Short for "the Philippine Islands."

JL

Yan Zhang <zhangyx106 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Yan Zhang
Subject: "The" Philippines
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Hi,
I am a Chinese TESOL teacher. In today's dictation exercise, there is a sentence "China is the first leg of the President¡¯s four-nation tour, which also includes Japan, South Korea and the Philippines." One student asked me why there is a "the" in front of Philippines, while usually people don't put definite article before a country name. Could anybody help? Thanks a lot.

Yan


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