textbook recommendation

[VShell]

On Thu, 17 Aug 2000, William Ryan wrote:
>     The fact is that the English definite article cannot in any way suggest
> subordination to Russia (which I gather is the reason for all this) - but the

"The" Ukraine implies subordination.  Examples like "the USA" and "the
Netherlands" do not, because they are plural and require the article.  No
other nation has "the" in front of its name (unless it too is some
colonialist anachronism  like "the Gambia" - which I rarely hear).

> word ‘Ukraina’ certainly does suggest a peripheral status. It is therefore
> illogical to ban the use of the semantically blameless English article while
> keeping the semantically loaded noun.

The etymology of "Ukrayina" is much more complicated than at first glance.
One interpretation I have heard is that during the time of "Kyyivs'ka
Rus'" the latter was "at the edge of civilization" - all lands to the east
and north were uncivilized.  I have heard other theories and explanations,
as well.

> A new state name (my suggestion of Kiev Rus',
> though light-hearted, was not entirely frivolous) would solve that
> problem, although it would leave anglophone writers still with a problem of
> appropriate usage in writing in historical and geographical contexts before the
> adoption of the new state name - an awkwardness which has already arisen in the
> case of Belarus, where the appropriateness of ‘Belarusian’ in medieval contexts
> is very dubious.

You mean Kyyivs'ka Rus'?  What you have suggested will irritate the
Ukrainian "nationalists" even more than "the Ukraine".

>     As a member of a minority in another multiracial community, I do not have
> to be told that the terminology of race is a subtle, often illogical, and fast
> changing area which has to be handled sensitively. But this is NOT about
> terminology of race - place names are not at all the same thing, 

The implication of "the Ukraine" for many Ukrainians is that Ukraine is a
subordinate of Russia, and Ukrainians are "malorus".  It thus immediately
becomes an ethnic insult.  So this is about race - or at least ethnicity -
and culture.

-- Stephen Bobick


 

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