"The" Philippines

[Wilson Gray]

Yes, it is.

-Wilson

On Mar 30, 2005, at 6:14 PM, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US>
> Subject:      Re: "The" Philippines
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> In German, 'fatherland' i.e. _Vaterland_  is neuter.
> Fritz
>> "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
>>
>