The Homa Files

That should be an easy question since its been in the news 24 x 7 recently.

But, I’ve heard friends, pundits and outraged Dem politicos say that he is the President of:

(a) The Ukraine (like The Philippines or  The Ohio State University)

(b) Ukraine (like Canada or Smokey Bear)

(c) Ukrania (like Romania)

So, which is it?

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For openers, we can toss out (c) Ukrainia … that’s grammatically incorrect … and just plain stupid (<= somebody please tell Chairman Schiff!)

The choice between (a) The Ukraine and (b) Ukraine is a little trickier…

Historically, the article “the” was used when The Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union … under direct Soviet control.

But, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence in 1991…

“Ukrainians decided that the article denigrated their country [by identifying it as a part of Russia] and abolished ‘the’ while speaking English, so now it is simply Ukraine.

It’s a sort of linguistic independence in Europe, that is hugely symbolic.” Source

In other words, it is incorrect both politically incorrect and socially offensive (to Ukranians)  to refer to “The Ukraine”.

So, the answer is (b) Ukraine.

Now that you know, smile smugly when you hear the pundits and politicos blow it.

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This entry was posted on November 12, 2019 at 6:59 am and is filed under Ukraine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.