Re: Nationality or ethnicity with the definite article.

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

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