mje@xxxxxxxx wrote:
But I wish that Britain and Australia (the latter of which is where
I live) retained the use of full-stops for abbreviations in the way that
the U.S. seems to have done.
Even here we're doing it less and less. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., and
the like still mostly have the periods, but units of measure
(probably under the influence of the metric/SI pattern in which
they're considered symbols, not short forms.
There used to be this thing about using full-stops for
abbreviations, but not for contractions, and the difference seemed to
hang on whether the last letter of the shortened form was the same as
the last letter in the full word
Yes, that was the British pattern, I believe. So Gen. had a
period, but Lt or Sgt or Mr did not.
Seemingly inexplicable exceptions to this, though, are countries
that (sometimes) take "the" in front: such as the Ukraine, the
Argentine, the Gambia, the Sudan, the Congo, the Netherlands, the
Lebanon
Not quite inexplicable. In all of these cases but Ukraine, the
areas referred to were regions, named after physical features
(mostly rivers: the Argentine for the Silver River, or Río de la
Plata; the Gambia and the Congo for those rivers) long before
they were sovereign states. In the case of the Ukraine and the
Netherlands, there is a generic element there, but hidden behind
a Slavonic disguise in the first case: the word Ukraina means
(according to all etymological sources I can find, though the
inhabitants don't like it and are trying to prove it means
something else) Boderland, Mark, or March. As one says the Mark
Brandenburg, the Welsh Marches, or the Mark of Ancona, so one
said the Ukraine.
As for the Netherlands, land/lands, like island/island, exhibits
an odd pattern: place names ending in in the plural form take
the, those with the singular do not: England, Scotland, Ireland,
but the Highlands, the Midlands, the Netherlands. The Philippine,
Marshall, etc Islands, but Long Island, Staten Island (though
Isle of Man is there to throw a spanner in the works).
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx