re: #122 The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

I don’t say either of those things because neither “England” nor “America” require a definite article as the Ukraine and the Sudan—and while we’re at it, the Gambia and the Lebanon, etc.—do.

I do however say “The United Kingdom”, “The United States”. Do you leave the article off of those?

This theory of there being anything derogatory or of there being any political implications to it is strictly in the fevered imaginations of the Ukrainians, whose language, remember, has no definite articles, and have no understanding of how illiterate it sounds to leave them off.

Again, do they get on French, Spanish, Italian speakers, etc., for putting definite articles in front of all country names? I’ll bet any amount of money they don’t.

I don’t put the in front of Sudan, Gambia, or Lebanon.

I’m learning Spanish while studying machine learning. One of the things I’ve figured out about language is that it’s rules are entirely a matter of what we’ve been trained to hear. If we all collectively wanted to, English speakers could stop using “do” as a placeholder, and in about 30 years, people would wonder what that archaic work was used for.