Re: Nationality or ethnicity with the definite article.

[David Auerbach auerbach@xxxxxxxx]

and, my homeland,
 The Bronx

On May 27, 2005, at 7:50 PM, Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
> Michael Edwards wrote:
> > But this does bring to a mind a question I've puzzled over for
> > many years, but never read a satisfactory answer (or any answer at
> > all) to: namely, why do so many people say "the Ukraine", "the
> > Argentine", "the Lebanon", "the Gambia", "the Congo", and "the
> > Sudan" (and
> > possibly a few others I can't think of at the moment). No-one
> > ever says "the
> > France" or "the Libya", and so on for most countries. ...Does
> > anyone know about this prefixing of "the" to the names of just a few
> > countries? And why is "the Philippines" plural? (I supppose
> > being in the plural form here will almost guarantee that it will
> > be prefixed with the definite article.)
> If I commented on the disability business, I would certainly wax
> pollitacally _in_correct, and probably profane as well. I'm legally
> blind without my glasses and it is exceedingly hampering.
> Pretending that it is not, or that one has some "different ability"
> that makes up for it, is just balderdash.
> But about "the" before countries there is a perfectly clear, though
> somewhat convoluted, principle. The definite article is used before
> the name of a geopolitical entity that includes certain generic
> terms. Geopolitical designations that include other generic terms
> or none at all are not prefixed by the definite article. Thus we
> say France, but _the_ French_Republic_; Ireland, but _the Republic_
> of Ireland; England, but _the_ United _Kingdom_; America, but _the_
> United _States._
> The convolutions come in when one considers which generic elements
> trigger the definite article: the suffix _land_ doesn't (England,
> Scotland, Ireland, Iceland), but the suffix _lands_ does (the
> Lowlands, the Highlands, the Netherlands, the Midlands). _Island_
> doesn't, at least hereabouts (Long Island, Staten Island) but
> _Islands_ and _Isle_ do (the Channel Islands, the Marshall Islands,
> the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Dogs).
> As for Ukraine, the reason gets lost in translation. The name
> _ukraina_ and similar words in other Slavonic languages mean
> "borderlands". In fact, the idiomatic English word would be _March_
> or _Mark_ (as in the Welsh Marches, the Mark of Ancona, the Mark of
> Brandenburg; I should not be surprised to find what is now the
> Ukraine referred to as the Mark of Kiev in 16th- or 17th-century
> writings). The first English speakers to have the area and its name
> brought to their attention were apparently uninsular enough to find
> out what it meant. And since _mark_ is one of those generic words
> that triggers the definite article, they dubbed it "the Ukraine."
> In the same part of the world, the area (disputed between Romania
> and Ukraine) called Bukovina is sometimes called the Bukovina,
> because the name means "beech woods." What the Romanian (or
> Bulgarian) province of Dobruja means, that it too should sometimes
> be called the Dobruja, I don't know (my father probably did; he was
> born there; but I never thought to ask him).
> "The Argentine" is an odd ellipsis of "the Argentine Republic"; the
> Congo probably gets its _the_ from conflation with the name of the
> river, since we always say "the" before names of rivers. The
> Philippines is plural because before it was the name of a sovereign
> state it was the name of a chain of islands: The Philipping
> Islands. About the Gambia and the Sudan I don't know. Does _Sudan_
> have some generic meaning in Arabic? I seem to recall a word _sud_
> as a geographic term.
> About "the subcontinent" I have no idea, except that it's a
> convenient catchall for an area the parts of which do have certain
> traits in common.
>
> Patricia M. Godfrey