# Ukraine and Netherlands, two odd countries **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2010, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387 "2010-06-24T17:58:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/21 "2010-06-25T02:55:34Z")
[The Lebanon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lebanon_%28song%29). ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/22 "2010-06-25T03:16:10Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Actually, the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics. And, at least according to [wikipedia,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union)the **The** is not officially part of the name as rendered in Russian Союз Советских Социалистических Республик. I wouldn’t expect “the” to be part of the official Russian name, seeing as there are no articles in Russian… 😉 My mistake on the United/Union thing though. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/23 "2010-06-25T03:44:18Z")
> [@Tahssa](#): > > The Canada. Actually, what is now southern Ontario and southern Quebec was known as The Canadas, when it was the British provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. ---
**Author:** ![Crescend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Crescend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crescend)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/24 "2010-06-25T04:06:05Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Ukrainians, understandably miffed at being described only by parallel with Russia, pushed first for recognition of Ukrainian as a distinct language under that name, then, when the USSR broke up, for the national name in languages with articles to be simply “Ukrainia” or “Ukraine” without the article. The major way that this distinction shows up in Russian (which, as you mentioned, is article-free) is the preposition that you use to describe the noun. “I’m going to the Ukraine” would be translated as “Я еду _на_ Украину” (Ya yedu _na_ Ukrainu). “I’m going to Ukraine” would be “Я еду _в_ Украину” (Ya yedu _v_ Ukrainu). The difference is that на means “onto” (or “upon”), while в means “into” in this context. One travels _into_ a country, while one travels _onto_ a region - e.g., I’d travel “onto” the beach, the islands, or the Far East, while I’d travel “into” France, or South Africa, or the dive bar down on the beach. And like all things in Russian, there’s a ton of exceptions, so one would travel “into” a continent. And, since both exceptions and arguments are fun, the usage of “na” vs. “v” has been debated and waxed and waned in both Russian and Ukrainian for the last four hundred years. Ain’t the politics of language grand? ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/25 "2010-06-25T04:31:56Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And some even transcend our planet: > > The Big Dipper > The Crab Nebula > The Pleiades. …and some transcend further still: [The Donald](http://www.webspacecentral.com/rightgirls/donald.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/26 "2010-06-25T06:59:02Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Actually, what is now southern Ontario and southern Quebec was known as The Canadas, when it was the British provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. “The Dominion of Canada” has fallen out of use, too, but it’s still fun to say. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/27 "2010-06-25T07:10:49Z")
The Czech Republic. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/28 "2010-06-25T07:24:46Z")
You don’t seem to hear it much any more, but it used to be quite common for people to refer to what is now known as Argentina as “The Argentine.” Also, the Indonesian island now known as Sulawesi used to be known, not so long ago, as The Celebes. However, it has never a unitary independent nation, so far as I know. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/29 "2010-06-25T07:45:00Z")
> [@Crescend](#): > > And, since both exceptions and arguments are fun, the usage of “na” vs. “v” has been debated and waxed and waned in both Russian and Ukrainian for the last four hundred years. Ain’t the politics of language grand? how the hell do you pronounce a single letter with no vowels and make it flow in a sentance? 😕😕 Though I was highly amused when I learned that german dropped an entire tense 😃 no more gerund form, you more or less use the infinitive sort of. Could you imagine how outraged the French would be if their government told them they could no longer use the gerund form :eek:😃 Their language nuts get teitchy about imported words and their ‘language purity’ :D:D ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/30 "2010-06-25T08:01:48Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > how the hell do you pronounce a single letter with no vowels and make it flow in a sentance? 😕😕 Welcome to Slavic languages. 😉 That one’s actually not very hard to pronounce; I don’t speak Russian but I’d just join the “v” to “Ukraina”. Try [this one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C4%8D_prst_skrz_krk) for a change. > [@](#): > > Though I was highly amused when I learned that german dropped an entire tense 😃 no more gerund form, you more or less use the infinitive sort of. Could you imagine how outraged the French would be if their government told them they could no longer use the gerund form :eek:😃 Their language nuts get teitchy about imported words and their ‘language purity’ :D:D “Government” does not dictate anything about language, usage determines it. That’s as true of German as of French or as any other language. Americans very often get the wrong idea about language regulatory bodies (which most languages have, as a matter of fact); they’re only advisory bodies, nothing more. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/31 "2010-06-25T08:35:42Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > how the hell do you pronounce a single letter with no vowels and make it flow in a sentance? 😕😕 How do you add a plural or possessive marker in English (an “s”) and make it flow in a sentence? Same basic idea, except with a “v” sound that happens to be broken out into a separate word [edit: and precedes the word being modified rather than follows it.] ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/32 "2010-06-25T09:30:39Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > Welcome to Slavic languages. 😉 That one’s actually not very hard to pronounce; I don’t speak Russian but I’d just join the “v” to “Ukraina”. Try [this one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C4%8D_prst_skrz_krk) for a change. > “Government” does not dictate anything about language, usage determines it. That’s as true of German as of French or as any other language. Americans very often get the wrong idea about language regulatory bodies (which most languages have, as a matter of fact); they’re only advisory bodies, nothing more. so how do they get everybody to not use the old gerund? > [@pulykamell](#): > > How do you add a plural or possessive marker in English (an “s”) and make it flow in a sentence? Same basic idea, except with a “v” sound that happens to be broken out into a separate word [edit: and precedes the word being modified rather than follows it.] I have a feeling it is one of those deals where it is a sound combination that is difficult to make if you are not raised doing it [like many americans cant roll Rs to save their lives because in general american english doesnt roll rs. =) ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/33 "2010-06-25T10:23:06Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > so how do they get everybody to not use the old gerund? In much the sameway as thou art constrained from using the Jacobean second-person singuar pronouns lest others laugh at thee. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Philosopher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3ec8ea/32.png) [@The\_Great\_Philosopher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Philosopher)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/34 "2010-06-25T11:30:06Z")
> [@](#): > > The United Kingdom > The United States > The Democratic Republic of the Congo > The United Arab Emirates > The United Soviet Socialist Republics > The Seychelles > The Maldives > The Congo None of these are the same thing. In the first five cases you use ‘the’ because there’s descriptive words in there. It’s used to describe a united set of states, republics or emirates, or a kingdom, or a democratic republic. You’d never see ‘the Britain’ by contrast. The Seychelles and Maldives use it because they’re plural. The Congo does indeed use it, because it describes an area, but ‘the Congo’ isn’t a country and you couldn’t use it to describe a country. ‘The Ukraine’ has no descriptive words, is not plural and can be used to describe a country, which makes it different. The Sudan and the Lebanon are two correct parallel examples that have been mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/35 "2010-06-25T13:08:21Z")
The one other case I can think of with an article, The Gambia, apparently gets its name because the name derives from the Gambia River. This may also be the situation for the Congo. Interestingly, in languages such as French and Italian, most countries take articles (_la France, l’Italie, le Canada_), and it’s the ones that don’t that are the exceptions – generally single islands, such as _Cuba_ or even _Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador_ (the other Canadian provinces get articles) or city states (_Saint-Marin_). Spanish doesn’t use articles generally in the same way, but uses them for a larger list of countries than English does; they’re optional, but idiomatic (_la India, la China, el Brasil, el Canadá_). ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/36 "2010-06-25T13:51:23Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > In much the sameway as thou art constrained from using the Jacobean second-person singuar pronouns lest others laugh at thee. Not only that, but in French some verb tenses are disappearing as well. The simple past is a solely literary tense, and quite commonly used in this context, but the imperfect subjunctive and pluperfect subjunctive are on the way out even as literary tenses. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/37 "2010-06-25T14:12:53Z")
Sudan officially dropped the former “the” from its name back in the '90s, around the time Ukraine did so. In Arabic, _al-Sūdān_ literally means ‘that of the black people’. _Aswad_ means ‘black’, and the plural form of _aswad_ for human beings is _sūd_. So by the addition of a suffix, the name _al-Sūdān_ is derived from that word. Actually, the original meaning of “the Sudan” was not a country name, but the name of a geographical zone (similar to “the Ukraine”). Going southward, first there was “the Sahara.” Not the Sahara Desert, mind you, which would be redundant. In Arabic, _ṣaḥārá_ is the plural form of _ṣaḥrá_, which is simply the word for ‘desert’. Next was “the Sahel”-- because in Arabic sāḥil means coast. Making a metaphor of the desert being like an ocean (of sand), so the area bordering that was the coast. The name Swahili is derived from the plural form of the same word (_sawāḥil_), meaning people on the east coast of Africa. Next was “the Sudan” which originally (and still to this day) is a geographical term for the savanna region where black people live, covering southern Senegal, southern Mali, northern Ghana, northern Nigeria, southern Chad, as well as the country named Sudan located at the eastern end of this eponymous geographical belt. By dropping “the” from their name, they established “Sudan” as the name of an independent nation instead of just a general region. I don’t think “the Lebanon” ever referred to the country. It too was the name of an area, short for “the Lebanon Mountains” (from the Canaanite/Hebrew word for ‘white’, because those were the only snow-capped mountains in the region). As far as I know, the country which became independent in 1943 has always been named just “Lebanon.” “The Argentine” always sounded very strange to me. It seems to have become obsolete before I was born (i.e. a very long time ago). I have no idea why Argentina was ever called that, unless it was the name of a geographical zone like the other examples. For that matter, it sounded very strange when the British music press referred to the popular progressive rock band Yes as “the Yes.” Huh? But I’m guilty of the same thing, because I habitually say “the Indigo Girls” when the band name is actually just “Indigo Girls,” which nobody seems to be aware of, not even me. This has got to be the sort of reason why David Byrne’s band tried to banish the _the_ from their name by titling their second album _The Name of This Band is Talking Heads_. Got that, Rolling Stone? The discarded _the_ was then snatched up by a band who recycled it. “The The.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/38 "2010-06-25T14:24:11Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > For that matter, it sounded very strange when the British music press referred to the popular progressive rock band Yes as “the Yes.” I’ve never heard Yes being called “the Yes”, but isn’t The Who’s correct name just “Who”? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/39 "2010-06-25T15:24:12Z")
Just to expand on **Johanna** ’s point a little: Prior to 1956-60 the present Republic of the Sudan was “the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”, i.e., that part of The Sudan (geographic region) held as a condominium by the U.K. and Egypt. The present Mali was “French Sudan” and was briefly an idependent nation named “Sudan” before joining with the former French Guinea (now just Guinea, not Equatorial, -Bissou, or what have you) in the Mali Federation, named after the medieval Sudanese empire. When they split up, the inland part (FKA French Sudan) retained the name Mali. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/40 "2010-06-25T16:27:48Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > “The Argentine” always sounded very strange to me. It seems to have become obsolete before I was born (i.e. a very long time ago). I have no idea why Argentina was ever called that, unless it was the name of a geographical zone like the other examples. I would guess it’s a direct translation of the river “La Plata”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387.md?page=3)