"The" Philippines

[Wilson Gray]

On Mar 30, 2005, at 5:12 PM, Michael McKernan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael McKernan <mckernan at LOCALNET.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "The" Philippines
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>>> In the Netherlands one finds "The Hague."  There also used to be
>>> "The Argentine."
>>> Slightly closer to home is "The Yukon."
>>>
>>> JL
>>
>> and "The Dalles" (Ore.), not to mention "The Bronx"
>
> I don't know about The Hague, or The Dalles,  but I am sure that The
> Gambia
> came from British occupation of the Gambia River's mouth (Banjul, once
> Bathurst), and subsequent colonization of as much of the river banks
> upstream as they felt was convenient, and properly sticking to the
> French
> who colonized Senegal (which totally surrounds The Gambia except for
> the
> coast around Banjul).
>
> The Argentine is surely derived from Rio de la Plata (River of Silver,
> hence Argentina/Argentine).
>
> Spanish tends to use the definite article with the name of any country
> (although that may be somewhat abandoned these days, particularly in
> the
> case of Spain itself).  When I lived in Ecuador, we always said 'el
> Ecuador' and 'el Peru', even 'el Argentina' and 'el China', cuz
> countries
> are masculine (patria =fatherland).

"patria = fatherland"

I don't think that this fact supports the claim that "countries are
masculine." "Patria" does mean "fatherland," but its own grammatical
gender is feminine. There's no necessary connection between the
grammatical gender of a word and its so-called "natural" gender.
Certainly, there's no necessary connection between grammatical gender
and natural gender among the members of a semantic set such as the
random, unpredictable names of countries.

-Wilson Gray

>   More and more, I seem to hear the
> article being omitted.  But I bet any Spanish speaker would say 'las
> Islas
> Filipinas', because isla (island) is feminine, and las Filipinas would
> be
> understood as 'the Filipina women'.  (I suppose that the Spanish
> thought
> England, being an island, was feminine as well, although it was
> promoted to
> a "land":  'Inglaterra.'  'Course, tierra is feminine as well...so
> merry
> old England gets a la from most Spanish-speakers:  'la Inglaterra'
> (some do
> use 'el', but more probably omit the article than use either gender
> form
> nowadays.
>
> The Yukon, I think, also is derived from the Yukon River.
>
> I believe there is (or was) a Bronx River, though if the borough was
> named
> for the river or vice versa, I don't know.
>
> Don't forget that we once had "The Soviet Union" (hardly a river,
> that),
> and "The United Arab Republic" (which had a river or two, though hardly
> eponymous; but hey, a good candidate for oxymoron, no?)  'Course, these
> disunited unions surely follow different 'rules'.
>
> If we are going to keep this up, perhaps we should consider why rivers
> require the definite article, as well as some non-nation place names
> such
> as The Everglades, The (Wisconsin) Dells, etc.  Seems to me that
> deserts
> also require the definite article, so it's nothing to do with water...
>
> Michael McKernan
>