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Old 07-25-2014, 05:31 PM   #16
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
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I expect two packages from [the] Ukraine in the next month or so. Last week I dropped my old stopwatch, which lost its voice and became paralyzed. So I went on eBay looking for a replacement. I bought two, one an Агат and the other a Слава. Each is coming from [the] Ukraine, and each was manufactured in the old USSR, or CCCP.

I write [the] because, although no equivalent of the is used in either Ukrainian or Russian, that is mostly because neither of these languages has such a word. Many Slavic languages lack articles. There are exceptions: Bulgarian, for example, has a postposited definite article. When translating from either Russian or Ukrainian to English, there are many occasions to insert the definite article the.

Just as it would be odd to translate from the Russian a sentence that literally said Man rides in boat without changing it to A man is riding in the boat to make it good English, one may reasonably use the before such place-names as Philippines or Ukraine or Amazon or Netherlands or Transvaal -- even though natives of these places usually leave it out even when writing English. Using the here is so common in English, even very literate English, that it would be a stretch to call it an error; and I personally think it sounds better. One man's opinion, of course, and certainly no more than that.

Oops, I goofed on the Netherlands -- they use the equivalent of the even in Dutch, and object when it's left out in English. My old friend and Jujutsu master Ben Bergwerf has chided me on that.
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