so "the US" could be offensive? Just curious, English is not my main language.
EDIT: Also totally agree on your other comments about Signal vs Telegram
EDIT: Also totally agree on your other comments about Signal vs Telegram
"The US", however, means "The United States", which makes it really clear that you're talking about the States as a nation (or at least as organized states) and gives it a lot of resistance to this nuance. The cleanest equivalent would "America" vs "the Americas", but because that's clearly too broad. Where a single article is all it takes to change the implication in the case of Ukraine, here we'd need more explicitly refer to the land, like "the continental US territory".
It's also worth noting that no one would be scrutinizing statements about the US in the same way because it doesn't have a context that puts it in dispute. At least in casual contexts, inaccuracies are often overlooked when what you meant to say is clear and uncontroversial.
Maybe a name change would be appropriate.
Regarding name change: be careful what you wish for; it may indeed be coming.
One of the French engineers, who built fortification lines, Guillaume de Beauplan[0], created the first map (1639) and wrote a book about Ukraine.
It was correct to refer to these fortifications as «The Ukraine» before Ukraine received independence from the Russian Empire, but no longer.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Vasseur_de_Beaupl...
Ukraine specifically asked/ stated through official channels that it considered using “the” was inappropriate around the time of its independence and it should be fair enough to respect that. It seems to come from the transition to independence and trying to assert its brand of being more than just a region as “the Ukraine” was a sort of informal way to refer to the soviet republic, an image they are and have been obviously motivated to distance themselves from.
Other places don’t have this historical reason to dislike “the” or equivalents in other languages.
The US constitution even begins “We the People of the United States”, so we’re probably fine with it :)
Alone “Mexico”, “France”, or “America” don’t get a “the” because grammatically it isn’t appropriate.
Ukraine can because the word in local language has a common meaning, something like “borderlands” so it does work, but they ask nicely that you don’t.
If you add the type of government, then you use the. Mexico alone doesn’t use it, much like Ukraine doesn’t specify the type of government so it’s omitted.
The Gambia is an edge case, as it’s requested by its government. From Wikipedia:
“The Gambia is one of a very small number of countries for which the definite article is commonly used in its English-language name, other than cases in which the name is plural (the Netherlands, the Philippines) or includes the form of government (the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic).“
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_pays_du_monde
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_Estados_soberanos
If I were speaking French or Portuguese, I would definitely say "the Mexico" (le Mexique, o México), "the Brazil" (le Brésil, o Brasil), and "the France" (la France, a França).
English has some traditions of using definite articles for singular proper geographic names. People have found some patterns in this, but my impression is that it's something that can be quite irregular in individual languages, and not consistent between languages, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The#Geographic_usage
The use "the Ukraine" sounds natural to me as a middle-aged native English speaker; my impression is that "Ukraine" has replaced "the Ukraine" in most references only because of the request of the Ukrainian government, and not because of any grammatical concern with proper names using definite articles.
But it's definitely possible that there is a pattern in which geographic features other than countries more likely to bear the definite article in English, while countries are less likely to bear it, and if there were such a pattern, we might be unconsciously aware of it and not be able to articulate it easily, much like many other patterns in language.
So I would encourage people not to say that it's illogical to use definite articles with proper names, including geographic names -- it can be traditional and even obligatory in English and many other languages! -- but also not to say that it's obvious that there are never any possible connotations to be drawn from such use in English (that governments might want to avoid, as some people are saying has happened here).
"The Ukraine" is how the Soviet Union referred to the country when they ruled it. Modern, independent Ukraine does not want this association anymore (and rightfully so).
For Ukraines case it would be more like, in my case, "the Norway" which to us would sound really weird. But not more than weird really.
I think Ukrainians also feel it makes the country name sound like a territory, and I suspect there is some history here that we're not aware of.
The current insanity going on there is of course a reason in itself.
But the russian language doesn't have definite articles, right? So is that how Russia calls Ukraine in international announcements and such? Do they even translate their messages to English themselves? I thought it was all in Russian and we translated
If it's not that, what would be the equivalent of the definite article in russian? Maybe it's some other grammatical element that implies the same thing or something similar?
This is actually kind of interesting from a linguistic perspective. I never knew definite article could such meanings in english
But that's not even something it's possible to say in Russian. They couldn't say "the Ukraine" if they wanted to.