OP: I’ve heard the term “the Ukraine” is offensive since it implies it’s an area, not a country. Consider editing out the “the”.
I’m also a huge fan of Signal and exclusively use it, but Telegram’s wide adoption is evidence that Signal’s feature set is lacking. Only very recently could you restrict group messages to admin-only. Group permissions aren’t granular. It still requires your phone number. You can’t transfer backups across platforms. New devices don’t get old message history.
These things really need to be addressed before it goes anywhere, it’s very hard to get users to make the trade off for a feature they can’t actually see.
Of course Signal's feature set is lacking. It's lacking by design. Signal makes different tradeoffs than Telegram; that is the entire premise of Signal: if there is a reasonable choice to be made in favor of security at the expense of UX, Signal will choose security, and Telegram will choose UX. It's literally part of the identities of the two different services.
This really twists people up in knots, but it's not hard to understand, even if it frustrates you that you get a poorer user experience in the messenger that has the cryptography you want (or poor-to-nonexistent cryptography in the messenger with the user experience you want).
Matrix/Element sure manages to do a lot of features that Signal doesn't. I'll admit the UX is not perfect, but it's not really that bad either; it even has a couple of UX advantages over Telegram, especially if you want to use the E2EE private chats in Telegram.
Signal could undoubtedly offer more features. Lacking granular permissions in group chats, for example, is not something I read as being "by-design". The phone number one is by-design, but I do not really agree it is a good security choice.
Regarding “the Ukraine” I obsessed over this a few years ago and asked every Ukrainian I knew (about 20 people). They had no idea what I was talking about and regarded as purely a quirk if the English language that has nothing to do with anything.
We also refer the Netherlands, the Philippines, the Bahamas, and occasionally even the Sudan.
The Ukranian language, like many Slavic languages, does not have definite/indefinite articles at all. In other words, the word "the" does not exist in Ukranian.
I had it explained to me The Ukraine comes from "The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" So its offensive as it doesn't acknowledge their new country.
That's actually a security feature.
If this is possible on Telegram, than Telegram is not secure because 1st they store your message history and 2nd if some third party could register a new device for your account they not only get your new messages but also your message history.
Not necessarily - Matrix E2EE supports this by allowing your new device to get all the encrypted message history, and allowing you to send the decryption keys to the new device from a backup or old device directly.
this is how e2ee is wrongly purported to be only OTR communication that is one time only. there is no reason if you have the keys why you cant restore them somewhere else also. you are responsible for maintaining the keys, not the software.
John Q. Budweiser doesn't recognize (or intend) it as offensive; it's just an "oh, that's how I heard it once; they must know." Romance languages always seem to use the article; I think it's German that really highlights the distinction of use of the article corresponding to an area or confederation (die Türkei, die Schweiz).
"Ukraine" means outskirts, so one way to read it is that "Outskirts" is clearly the proper noun of a country, where-as "The outskirts" is a territory.
"The US", however, means "The United States", which makes it really clear that you're talking about the States as a nation (or at least as organized states) and gives it a lot of resistance to this nuance. The cleanest equivalent would "America" vs "the Americas", but because that's clearly too broad. Where a single article is all it takes to change the implication in the case of Ukraine, here we'd need more explicitly refer to the land, like "the continental US territory".
It's also worth noting that no one would be scrutinizing statements about the US in the same way because it doesn't have a context that puts it in dispute. At least in casual contexts, inaccuracies are often overlooked when what you meant to say is clear and uncontroversial.
When it has a capital letter at the beginning, it’s perfectly clear that we’re referring to a country, rather than “the outskirts”. When our text is in English, it’s clear that “Ukraine” refers to a country, not “outskirts”. This is downright ridiculous and it’s annoying that some people are so deficient in application of contextual understanding that they criticize others in this way. Be nice to people and stop playing word police. This isn’t Reddit.
Ukraine means «fortified area»: укріплення (fortifications) + край (area) = україна (ookruhїnuh, Ukraine). It's a number of fortification lines built to protect Europe from eastern nomads. Russian are replacing Oo by Oh at the beginning to make «Outskirt» (of Moscow) in Russian language. Don't spread falsified version, please.
One of the French engineers, who built fortification lines, Guillaume de Beauplan[0], created the first map (1639) and wrote a book about Ukraine.
It was correct to refer to these fortifications as «The Ukraine» before Ukraine received independence from the Russian Empire, but no longer.
“The US” or “the Netherlands” are not offensive to either.
Ukraine specifically asked/ stated through official channels that it considered using “the” was inappropriate around the time of its independence and it should be fair enough to respect that. It seems to come from the transition to independence and trying to assert its brand of being more than just a region as “the Ukraine” was a sort of informal way to refer to the soviet republic, an image they are and have been obviously motivated to distance themselves from.
Other places don’t have this historical reason to dislike “the” or equivalents in other languages.
The US constitution even begins “We the People of the United States”, so we’re probably fine with it :)
We’re not discussing the local language, we’re discussing the English language.
If you add the type of government, then you use the. Mexico alone doesn’t use it, much like Ukraine doesn’t specify the type of government so it’s omitted.
I'm not sure plurality is the distinguishing feature, since you have The United Kingdom, The Czech Republic, and The Gambia. But none of that really matters; if the country says it doesn't use the definite article, it seems pretty straightforward to not do so.
Those are modified by kingdom and republic. There are many kingdoms and republics, which is why you identify it with “the”. That’s not what’s happening with Ukraine.
The Gambia is an edge case, as it’s requested by its government. From Wikipedia:
“The Gambia is one of a very small number of countries for which the definite article is commonly used in its English-language name, other than cases in which the name is plural (the Netherlands, the Philippines) or includes the form of government (the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic).“
Interestingly, in many languages you often would, but it depends on the specific country. Both French and Portuguese use the definite article for most countries but not all.
If I were speaking French or Portuguese, I would definitely say "the Mexico" (le Mexique, o México), "the Brazil" (le Brésil, o Brasil), and "the France" (la France, a França).
English has some traditions of using definite articles for singular proper geographic names. People have found some patterns in this, but my impression is that it's something that can be quite irregular in individual languages, and not consistent between languages, either.
The use "the Ukraine" sounds natural to me as a middle-aged native English speaker; my impression is that "Ukraine" has replaced "the Ukraine" in most references only because of the request of the Ukrainian government, and not because of any grammatical concern with proper names using definite articles.
But it's definitely possible that there is a pattern in which geographic features other than countries more likely to bear the definite article in English, while countries are less likely to bear it, and if there were such a pattern, we might be unconsciously aware of it and not be able to articulate it easily, much like many other patterns in language.
So I would encourage people not to say that it's illogical to use definite articles with proper names, including geographic names -- it can be traditional and even obligatory in English and many other languages! -- but also not to say that it's obvious that there are never any possible connotations to be drawn from such use in English (that governments might want to avoid, as some people are saying has happened here).
Brits calling the US "the colonies" would be a better comparison.
"The Ukraine" is how the Soviet Union referred to the country when they ruled it. Modern, independent Ukraine does not want this association anymore (and rightfully so).
I think the most relevant history is the autocrat leading an invasion saying their nation is not sovereign. Agreeing with that statement would be rightfully upsetting.
No, the US is not particularly offensive. 'The Ukraine' specifically is offensive, because it is how Russia calls Ukraine, (kinda like implying it's The Ukraine of Russia)
But the russian language doesn't have definite articles, right?
So is that how Russia calls Ukraine in international announcements and such? Do they even translate their messages to English themselves? I thought it was all in Russian and we translated
If it's not that, what would be the equivalent of the definite article in russian? Maybe it's some other grammatical element that implies the same thing or something similar?
This is actually kind of interesting from a linguistic perspective. I never knew definite article could such meanings in english
> I’ve heard the term “the Ukraine” is offensive since it implies it’s an area, not a country.
I've heard it's offensive because that is how the Russians
said it in soviet times before Ukrainian independence which made it simply "Ukraine" in its constitution.
Slight nit - they used to say "on Ukraine" (на Украине) as in /on Ukrainian land/. In contrast to the term "in" - "in Ukraine" - which is something you would use to reference an entity, for ex. a country.
It's accurate it's an old Soviet mind game to put Ukrainians in their place. It's the same for Kyiv, in Russian it's Kiev. It's not the same as "The X country" there's a deeper history to it. In Ukraine their language doesn't even have the equivalent of "the".
Russian doesn’t have the definite article either, right? So it can’t be a Soviet mind game. In fact “the Ukraine” was common throughout the 19th century (check ngrams.google.com).
I intend to continue saying “Kiev”. I also pronounce the S in Paris. I don’t like the trend that a country’s rulers are allowed to tell us all how to pronounce/spell its name.
Deeper history aside, obviously no one has any negative intention in saying it in their comments. Everyone knows what they mean. It’s flatly unhelpful to go around constantly correcting people.
Nobody said there was a negative intention. Instead, somebody asked somebody else to edit a post. "Hey, I didn't know that bothered people. I'll change it." That's an easy response that makes the world a better place in a small way.
"The Ukraine" is an area. It's the land between Russia and the rest of Europe (it literally translates to "borderland.") The country of Ukraine was named after it. Furthermore: The Article is added when territories become disputed, which is the case here (although it's odd that the groups pushing for its use most often are the ones insisting that Russia is in the wrong by creating the situation.)
As to the IM apps: they're all crap. Everything on smartphones is there either to tie you to a corporation, sell you something, or sell you to something. XMPP has E2EE (the same way signal does), push, carbons ("message backups") etc but no one uses it because it lacks the PR that these larger apps with companies behind them have.
Can you tell us from which language you translate, please?
If you translate from Russian language, then note that Russian language was not existent when the term «Ukraine» was coined (1639). In Ukrainian and Polish languages, Ukraine means «fortified area» or «fortified country». Even Russian language has words like «укрепления» (fortifications), «укрытие» (cover) and «край» (land, area), thus meaning of word «украина» should be obvious even for Russians. However, they exchange Ukrainian word for Russian word «окраина» («outskirts», «околиця» in Ukrainian), to dismiss Ukraine as independent country.
> You need to work on your facts. The term was coined several hundred years before 1639.
Of course, the term «ukraine» was used for centuries before founding of Moscow, but in 17th century the set of ukraines was built on territory of former Russia (now Ukraine), so the whole territory of former Russia got name «Ukraine». From usage of the word it's easy to guess it's meaning: a land with fortification, which protects it.
> I would guess the /u/ - /o/ change happened for the same reason that the Russian word for "Russia", named after the Rus, is "Rossiya".
Rossiya is the late transcription of the word Russia to Cyrillic.
Originally, Russia meant the town of Russia (now: Old Russa, Старая Русса) or «red». In times of Justinianic plague (541–549 AD), original Russians abandoned their town and spread around large territory, between Azov sea and Spain, trying to avoid plague.
About century before that, Volyn kingdom, last kingdom of all Slavs, was broken into pieces when king Muzhyk (Brave) was captured by Greeks when he helped his brother to raid Byzantine. Russians (now Ukrainians) captured the city of Kyїv and start to rule 9 Slavic tribes in the freshly formed country. In Ukrainian, suffix -sia (-ся) means here/there/self, so it was dropped, thus the name of Russia shortened to just Rus, while keeping it original spelling at West.
When Moscow tsar Petro I captured Russia(now Ukraine), he appended «tsar of all Russia» to his title. Moscow tsar Caterina II, born in Prussia, renamed Moscow kingdom to Russian Empire and directed to return all correspondence sent to old name, so most Western countries started to call Moscow kingdom as Russia (except very few, which still know Ukraine as Russia, which is used by Russians to confuse people).
However, two Russia's created confusion in Moscow kingdom, so they refer to old one as Rus, while refer to modern one as Rossia. It has nothinh to do with «ou» to «o» (oh) and «u» (oo) transition.
It's similar to how RF captured their seat in UN: they never formally accepted into UN, so they just switched the country name on the table.
> Rossiya is the late transcription of the word Russia to Cyrillic.
This could be true.
> Originally, Russia meant the town of Russia (now: Old Russa, Старая Русса) or «red».
This is an ideologically-motivated delusion, more or less on the level of the Indians who are willing to claim that the Aryans were indigenous to the subcontinent while ignoring the linguistic and genetic evidence. Russia refers to the Rus in the same way that France refers to the Franks and Serbia refers to the Serbs.
It's written history. If you know Russian, just read chronicles.
> This is an ideologically-motivated delusion, more or less on the level of the Indians who are willing to claim that the Aryans were indigenous to the subcontinent while ignoring the linguistic and genetic evidence. Russia refers to the Rus in the same way that France refers to the Franks and Serbia refers to the Serbs.
Ideologically motivated delusion for Russian Empire was to be descendants of Rome Empire via Byzantine and Russia (Ukraine). No Emperor of the time wanted to draw their line from a bunch of bastards of unknown origin, which did raids on neighborhoods. The town of Russia moved up of the Russia (now Porussia) river, but it is still present on the map.
Russia is not a Slavic word, so you cannot draw such parallels. When Russians captured Kyїv (Oleg of Novgorod killed Ascold and Dir, Slavic rulers of Kyїv, in 882), Russians declared Kyїv as mother for Russian cities, but Russian were assimilated by Slavs, so they forgot their native language and started to use Slavic language, so, with time, name of their country was changed according to rules of Slavic language.
I’m also a huge fan of Signal and exclusively use it, but Telegram’s wide adoption is evidence that Signal’s feature set is lacking. Only very recently could you restrict group messages to admin-only. Group permissions aren’t granular. It still requires your phone number. You can’t transfer backups across platforms. New devices don’t get old message history.
These things really need to be addressed before it goes anywhere, it’s very hard to get users to make the trade off for a feature they can’t actually see.