I have a wild turkey hen that has been wandering across my lawn nearly every morning not long after sunrise, with a half dozen or so poults, I guess you call them, according to the internet, but "chicks" is the only thing that registers in my brain for what I see. Anyway, what I heard was that Türkiye doesn't like that in English, their name is a homonym for a bird that is sometimes used as an insult, and so they asked English speakers to change it.
It's similar in Ukrainian. It's them asking us not to literally translate their name according to the rules of English, and expect us to Here is what ChatGPT says:
How do you write "Ukraine" in Ukrainian? In Ukrainian, Ukraine is written as "Україна".
How do you write "the Ukraine" in Ukrainian
in Ukrainian, "the Ukraine" is written as "Україна". In Ukrainian, there is no article equivalent to "the" in English, so "Україна" is used without an article.
To me, it sounds like Boris and Natasha talking about "Moose and Squirrel," but I guess they don't care that it sounds comic to us, Boris and Natasha probably don't think that not saying "the Moose and the Squirrel" is weird either. When Seinfeld did that "Ukraine is game to you?" bit, it was before they changed the name for us English speakers from "The Ukraine" and so it gave a comic Boris and Natasha cartoon feel.
And Asian languages, apparently. I often, both as a fellow grad student then as a professor, found myself editing papers written by Asian students. They were constantly leaving articles out but, more amusingly, they were also including them in inappropriate places. They knew they should be using them but didn't know where to put them so they just got stuck in haphazardly. At times it was quite comical.
A wonderful clarity to the air there this morning. And I notice the dock is underwater. Was there a hard, cleansing rain yesterday? Beautiful photos as always.
"Let’s count on that slogan “All in for Biden!,” proposed by American conservatives, for the summer of 2024 will finally unite a divided America. We all should support the lip-slapper who, according to him, created NATO (the alliance was founded in 1949, when Biden was seven years old). Indeed, how can one be against a pioneer who proudly announced that he is “the first black woman to serve with a black president”?
In 2019, 350 American psychiatrists sent a letter to the United States Congress. They argued that Trump’s mental health was dangerously deteriorating, that he was mentally unstable and a threat to our country’s security. Where are these 350 psychic authorities now? Why are they silent? Has Trump really recovered? How, exactly? Isn’t Trump still a threat to our country in 2024? Has American punitive psychiatry finally outdone Soviet psychiatry?"
If the Ukrainian guy in the Seinfeld bit spoke proper English at the time, the nineties, he would have said’The Ukraine is a game to you?”
Now we all are required to talk like Boris and Natasha in some kind of supposed dig at the Russians. “What’s happening in Borderlands this morning?” Ukrainian literally means borderer, but we are supposed to believe that they are the heart of Slavic culture and that the Russians aren’t even Slavs but some kind of lower order half-breed with the Mongols. It’s the kind of absurdity you might have expected from that guy with the mustache who was popular in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. But don’t worry, they never say “master race” out loud, they just imply that they are thinking it, because they were never conquered by the Mongols, they claim, but when you say “so in other words…” suddenly they protest way too much.
Some one gave me a lecture that it wasn’t the mongol blood, but they absorbed the way of thinking, which only brings up, again the times when the Ukrainians fought side by side with the Nazis. Maybe it’s that thinking that the Ukrainians detect as missing in the Russian mind.
In even more fun, standard practice in Russia is to draw graphs with the highest positive value to the left, and the least to the right. That wrecks 40 years of intuition, but it’s not too bad with computer plotting.
Turkey has been spelled and pronounced Türkiye (Tur-kee-yeah) in Turkish since the country became a republic in 1923. We are now just getting around to pronouncing and spelling it correctly. Remember when we all referred to Beijing, the capitol of China, as Peking?
"Now we are all required to talk like Boris and Natasha"
We are? How you polish your little nuggets.
The reason we said Peking instead of Beijing was because the Brit who did the first thorough transliterations was a nut, and assigned non-standard pronunciations to the English letters he used--as I understand it, his "Pee-King" was to have been pronounced "Bay-Jing" anyway.
Reinventing the wheel . . .
There are no rules and restrictions on the evolution of languages due to cultural or political pressures and considerations, good or bad.
And here's imTay again (5:19am) repeating Russian lies about Ukraine.
He pretends it's some kind of imposition to be expected to call the place 'Ukraine' without a 'the', as if we called its neighbors 'the Russia' and 'the Moldova' and 'the Romania'. How many countries are there in the world that use 'the'? Let's see, the Dominican Republic, the Central African Republic, the Netherlands - that's about it. And if the Dutch asked us to call their country 'Netherlands' without the 'the', we would do it without arguing, because it's their country and they get to decide on its name. Would 'imTay' insist on calling Sri Lanka 'Ceylon' or Taiwan (whose independence he's still complaining about) 'Formosa'? Only a total asshole would do that. And only a total asshole calls the country "the Ukraine" in English, especially after admitting that it doesn't have an article in Ukrainian.
As for "the times when the Ukrainians fought side by side with the Nazis", that is of course another bald-faced lie. Again, 'imTay' uses "the" as a weapon. The only time when "the Ukrainians", which clearly implies all of them, fought side by side with the Nazis was during the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Russians and all their other subject nations did, too, and the Ukrainians had no choice.
As I have pointed out before, there were just as many Dutchmen as Ukrainians in the Waffen SS, and from a much smaller population, and that does not make the Netherlands a Nazi state. Similarly, far far more Ukrainians fought in the Red Army than for Hitler. Of course, Russians and their Vatnik buddies like to pretend it was the Russian Army that fought Hitler on the Eastern Front, when it was in fact the Soviet Army, millions of whom were not Russians.
Finally, anyone who keeps up with Russian TV propaganda via @JuliaDavisNews knows that it's the Russians who consider themselves superior to Ukrainians, not the other way around. 'imTay' lies again.
Ralph L.: Touché! I knew I was forgetting something important. Doesn't affect my main point, of course, that adding an article to a country that doesn't have one in its own language is stupid and rude.
I believe that The Gambia and The Ukraine were the only two countries to use a definite article without a reference to the structure of the government (republics, states).
The Congo and The Sudan also come to mind, but now there isn't just one of either. Further I think the usage was referring to the geographic feature each was named after. (That's where "The Gambia" comes from too. But as the country is basically a few miles on each side of the river, it works.)
Turkey asking English speakers to call it "Türkiye" makes as much sense to me as Germany asking us to call it "Deutschland", Japan "Nippon", Hungary "Magyarország", Greece "Hellas", or Albania "Shqipëria".
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29 comments:
So why, all of a sudden, is everyone saying 'Turkee-ah' or 'Turkee-eh' during the Euro Cup?
Who are the powers that be that proclaimed we will now change the way we say the name of this country?
Same with 'Key-ev' to 'Keeve.'
Start saying 'Pair-ee' during the Olympics and see what happens.
I have a wild turkey hen that has been wandering across my lawn nearly every morning not long after sunrise, with a half dozen or so poults, I guess you call them, according to the internet, but "chicks" is the only thing that registers in my brain for what I see. Anyway, what I heard was that Türkiye doesn't like that in English, their name is a homonym for a bird that is sometimes used as an insult, and so they asked English speakers to change it.
It's similar in Ukrainian. It's them asking us not to literally translate their name according to the rules of English, and expect us to
Here is what ChatGPT says:
How do you write "Ukraine" in Ukrainian?
In Ukrainian, Ukraine is written as "Україна".
How do you write "the Ukraine" in Ukrainian
in Ukrainian, "the Ukraine" is written as "Україна". In Ukrainian, there is no article equivalent to "the" in English, so "Україна" is used without an article.
To me, it sounds like Boris and Natasha talking about "Moose and Squirrel," but I guess they don't care that it sounds comic to us, Boris and Natasha probably don't think that not saying "the Moose and the Squirrel" is weird either. When Seinfeld did that "Ukraine is game to you?" bit, it was before they changed the name for us English speakers from "The Ukraine" and so it gave a comic Boris and Natasha cartoon feel.
"In Ukrainian, there is no article equivalent to 'the' in English."
It's like Russian that way.
"It's like Russian that way."
And Asian languages, apparently. I often, both as a fellow grad student then as a professor, found myself editing papers written by Asian students. They were constantly leaving articles out but, more amusingly, they were also including them in inappropriate places. They knew they should be using them but didn't know where to put them so they just got stuck in haphazardly. At times it was quite comical.
A wonderful clarity to the air there this morning. And I notice the dock is underwater. Was there a hard, cleansing rain yesterday? Beautiful photos as always.
"So why, all of a sudden, is everyone saying 'Turkee-ah' or 'Turkee-eh' during the Euro Cup?"
Thank you. I was wondering if I had missed a memo.
Politico: "First Biden hosts donors at the White House. Then they give massive checks."
I thought doing fundraisers at the White House was ilegal.
I thought doing fundraisers at the White House was ilegal
We all thought that snorting coke at the WH was illegal as well.
I thought doing fundraisers at the White House was ilegal. [sic]
They are. But there are ways around it.
Nothing is illegal if you are a Progressive. They keep slapping us in the face with that fact.
"Let’s count on that slogan “All in for Biden!,” proposed by American conservatives, for the summer of 2024 will finally unite a divided America. We all should support the lip-slapper who, according to him, created NATO (the alliance was founded in 1949, when Biden was seven years old). Indeed, how can one be against a pioneer who proudly announced that he is “the first black woman to serve with a black president”?
In 2019, 350 American psychiatrists sent a letter to the United States Congress. They argued that Trump’s mental health was dangerously deteriorating, that he was mentally unstable and a threat to our country’s security. Where are these 350 psychic authorities now? Why are they silent? Has Trump really recovered? How, exactly? Isn’t Trump still a threat to our country in 2024? Has American punitive psychiatry finally outdone Soviet psychiatry?"
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/07/the_white_house_mummy.html
Having had to edit the English writing of a Russian born scientist, I can confirm that she was never exposed to the article “the.”
If the Ukrainian guy in the Seinfeld bit spoke proper English at the time, the nineties, he would have said’The Ukraine is a game to you?”
Now we all are required to talk like Boris and Natasha in some kind of supposed dig at the Russians. “What’s happening in Borderlands this morning?” Ukrainian literally means borderer, but we are supposed to believe that they are the heart of Slavic culture and that the Russians aren’t even Slavs but some kind of lower order half-breed with the Mongols. It’s the kind of absurdity you might have expected from that guy with the mustache who was popular in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. But don’t worry, they never say “master race” out loud, they just imply that they are thinking it, because they were never conquered by the Mongols, they claim, but when you say “so in other words…” suddenly they protest way too much.
Some one gave me a lecture that it wasn’t the mongol blood, but they absorbed the way of thinking, which only brings up, again the times when the Ukrainians fought side by side with the Nazis. Maybe it’s that thinking that the Ukrainians detect as missing in the Russian mind.
In even more fun, standard practice in Russia is to draw graphs with the highest positive value to the left, and the least to the right. That wrecks 40 years of intuition, but it’s not too bad with computer plotting.
Ukrainians fought side by side with Nazis because Stalin and the fucking communists were doing their best to kill them off by starvation.
In Soviet Russia graph draws you!
Turkey has been spelled and pronounced Türkiye (Tur-kee-yeah) in Turkish since the country became a republic in 1923. We are now just getting around to pronouncing and spelling it correctly. Remember when we all referred to Beijing, the capitol of China, as Peking?
lonejustice said...
Turkey has been spelled and pronounced Türkiye (Tur-kee-yeah) in Turkish...
We're speaking in English, not in Turkish.
"Now we are all required to talk like Boris and Natasha"
We are? How you polish your little nuggets.
The reason we said Peking instead of Beijing was because the Brit who did the first thorough transliterations was a nut, and assigned non-standard pronunciations to the English letters he used--as I understand it, his "Pee-King" was to have been pronounced "Bay-Jing" anyway.
Reinventing the wheel . . .
There are no rules and restrictions on the evolution of languages due to cultural or political pressures and considerations, good or bad.
And here's imTay again (5:19am) repeating Russian lies about Ukraine.
He pretends it's some kind of imposition to be expected to call the place 'Ukraine' without a 'the', as if we called its neighbors 'the Russia' and 'the Moldova' and 'the Romania'. How many countries are there in the world that use 'the'? Let's see, the Dominican Republic, the Central African Republic, the Netherlands - that's about it. And if the Dutch asked us to call their country 'Netherlands' without the 'the', we would do it without arguing, because it's their country and they get to decide on its name. Would 'imTay' insist on calling Sri Lanka 'Ceylon' or Taiwan (whose independence he's still complaining about) 'Formosa'? Only a total asshole would do that. And only a total asshole calls the country "the Ukraine" in English, especially after admitting that it doesn't have an article in Ukrainian.
As for "the times when the Ukrainians fought side by side with the Nazis", that is of course another bald-faced lie. Again, 'imTay' uses "the" as a weapon. The only time when "the Ukrainians", which clearly implies all of them, fought side by side with the Nazis was during the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Russians and all their other subject nations did, too, and the Ukrainians had no choice.
As I have pointed out before, there were just as many Dutchmen as Ukrainians in the Waffen SS, and from a much smaller population, and that does not make the Netherlands a Nazi state. Similarly, far far more Ukrainians fought in the Red Army than for Hitler. Of course, Russians and their Vatnik buddies like to pretend it was the Russian Army that fought Hitler on the Eastern Front, when it was in fact the Soviet Army, millions of whom were not Russians.
Finally, anyone who keeps up with Russian TV propaganda via @JuliaDavisNews knows that it's the Russians who consider themselves superior to Ukrainians, not the other way around. 'imTay' lies again.
that's about it.
The United States of America
Ralph L.:
Touché! I knew I was forgetting something important. Doesn't affect my main point, of course, that adding an article to a country that doesn't have one in its own language is stupid and rude.
La France.
Istanbul
Not Constantinople
I believe that The Gambia and The Ukraine were the only two countries to use a definite article without a reference to the structure of the government (republics, states).
The Congo and The Sudan also come to mind, but now there isn't just one of either.
Further I think the usage was referring to the geographic feature each was named after.
(That's where "The Gambia" comes from too. But as the country is basically a few miles on each side of the river, it works.)
Turkey asking English speakers to call it "Türkiye" makes as much sense to me as Germany asking us to call it "Deutschland", Japan "Nippon", Hungary "Magyarország", Greece "Hellas", or Albania "Shqipëria".
I forgot about the Netherlands.
But if that country expected English speakers to drop the article, it would be weird.
THE Ohio State University.
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