There’s no such thing as “The” in both Russian and Ukrainian, but what I’ve seen happen is pro-russian people intentionally saying “on (the) Ukraine” (as if “on the edge”) instead of “in Ukraine” to piss people off.
For those wondering, Xinjiang, the province controlled by China where the Uyghurs are is named similarly. It literally means “new frontier” in Mandarin.
Many Uyghurs prefer the name East Turkestan. (But ofc thats heavily repressed by the CCP).
Similar for
The Ukrainewhich means “the frontier” in Russian and evokes the history of Muscovite imperialism over their frontier statesThe word “Ukraine” itself doesn’t mean anything in russian nor ukrainian, it’s just a name for a state
The Ukrainian embassy says that
The Ukraineis both grammatically and politically incorrect. 🤷🏻♀️but of course. I never said otherwise. it’s your words about it meaning “frontier” in russian is what i was debating, please read my comment again.
There’s no such thing as “The” in both Russian and Ukrainian, but what I’ve seen happen is pro-russian people intentionally saying “on (the) Ukraine” (as if “on the edge”) instead of “in Ukraine” to piss people off.
Huh. TIL Slavic languages don’t have a definite article.
So it’s this grammatical mess of Germanic definite articles attached to a Slavic word and the outcome is politically fraught
I can’t speak to all Slavic languages but in mine it’s concatenated to the subject rather than being its own word
For those wondering, Xinjiang, the province controlled by China where the Uyghurs are is named similarly. It literally means “new frontier” in Mandarin.
Many Uyghurs prefer the name East Turkestan. (But ofc thats heavily repressed by the CCP).