Iran has accused Kyiv of supporting US and Israeli attacks, while Kyiv says nearly 60,000 Iranian drones have struck its territory and “not a single Ukrainian drone has ever hit Iran.”
Not necessarily true, the Ukraine is also acceptable in British English and other languages put a definite article in front of Ukraine, if you are translating to English as a second language
To add another layer of absurdity to this linguistic debate, both of the native languages (Ukrainian/Russian) entirely lack definite articles such as “the”. Russian/Ukrainian doesn’t even have a word for “the”.
For example, when translating “A cat is on the table” to either Russian or Ukrainian (the two languages are pretty similar), you’d end up with what would translate back most literally as “Cat is on table.”
Including it or not only becomes an issue when translated into other languages.
Ukraine is one of a few English country names traditionally used with the definite article the.[3] Use of the article was standard before Ukrainian independence, but has decreased since the 1990s.[4][5][59] For example, the Associated Press dropped the article “the” on 3 December 1991.[5] Use of the definite article was criticised as suggesting a non-sovereign territory, much like “the Lebanon” referred to the region before its independence, or as one might refer to “the Midwest”, a region of the United States.[60][61][62][f]
In 1993, the Ukrainian government explicitly requested that, in linguistic agreement with countries and not regions,[65] the Russian preposition в, v, be used instead of на, na,[66] and in 2012, the Ukrainian embassy in London further stated that it is politically and grammatically incorrect to use a definite article with Ukraine.[3] Use of Ukraine without the definite article has since become commonplace in journalism and diplomacy (examples are the style guides of The Guardian[67] and The Times[68]). According to U.S. ambassador William Taylor, “The Ukraine” implies disregard for the country’s sovereignty.[69] The Ukrainian position is that the usage of “The Ukraine” is incorrect both grammatically and politically.[3]
It’s just Ukraine.
‘The Ukraine’ is a Russian dogwhistle.
oh wow. I just did a bit of a skim of an article, and ukrainians themselves have said it’s just “ukraine”. My apologies to them :(
You’re good :)
I never knew this. Thanks for letting me know.
Not necessarily true, the Ukraine is also acceptable in British English and other languages put a definite article in front of Ukraine, if you are translating to English as a second language
To add another layer of absurdity to this linguistic debate, both of the native languages (Ukrainian/Russian) entirely lack definite articles such as “the”. Russian/Ukrainian doesn’t even have a word for “the”.
For example, when translating “A cat is on the table” to either Russian or Ukrainian (the two languages are pretty similar), you’d end up with what would translate back most literally as “Cat is on table.”
Including it or not only becomes an issue when translated into other languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine