A more accurate comparison is “The Palatinate”, “The Pale”, “The Highlands” or “The Yucatan” - it’s still wrong but it’s not unheard of for regions defined by a predominant geographic feature.
Interestingly enough one of my examples shares that distinction and is just arbitrary. “The Pale” is drawn from the same root as pallisade and basically means fence post… it’s basically “What the English claim” and it’s a completely arbitrary region.
Why do people keep calling it “the Ukraine”? Serious question.
Because in English it used to be called that before its independence in 1991. It’s now considered wrong and demeaning though.
A similar issue exists in other languages, so it’s also likely that the error repeatedly gets carried over when translated to English.
Ah, TIL. It sounds really weird to me, like saying “the Germany” or “the France”.
My language doesn’t use articles like “a” or “the” so similar issues don’t exist here at all.
A more accurate comparison is “The Palatinate”, “The Pale”, “The Highlands” or “The Yucatan” - it’s still wrong but it’s not unheard of for regions defined by a predominant geographic feature.
Ukraine is not a predominant geographic feature? Like, I know what the name means, but for English speaking people the word doesn’t mean anything?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine Check out the “English definite article” section
Interestingly enough one of my examples shares that distinction and is just arbitrary. “The Pale” is drawn from the same root as pallisade and basically means fence post… it’s basically “What the English claim” and it’s a completely arbitrary region.
It sounds really weird to me too!!!
force of habit
I think lack of sleep could be at play here too 😴