American politicians are violating the rules of English grammar in favour of their policy of NATO expansion and destabilizing Europe by way of coups

William Taylor, who served as American ambassador in Ukraine in 2006–2009, dared to correct President Obama, who in one of his speeches said “the Ukraine” referring to the country in the Eastern Europe, in which American-backed coup took place a year ago.

“Ukraine is a country,” says William Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “The Ukraine is the way the Russians referred to that part of the country during Soviet times … Now that it is a country, a nation, and a recognized state, it is just Ukraine. And it is incorrect to refer to the Ukraine, even though a lot of people do it.”

There are plenty of times when sticking a the in front of a place name is perfectly acceptable, like when one is referring to a country that is a geographic area, like the group of islands that makes up the Philippines, or a region of a country, like the Northeast. You might be differentiating the United Kingdom from all other kingdoms. And in English, you would almost always tack the in front of river names like the Mississippi. Some countries named for rivers have long kept the article, like the Congo, as University of Sussex linguistics professor Lynne Murphy points out in his post on the subject. Plural names, like the United States or the Netherlands, get one too. “Ukraine” was always used with the definite article for the same reason that this name is used with preposition “on” according to the rules of the Russian language, because the word means “the outskirt, the edge [of Russia]”.

Ridiculously, Tailor makes a Freudian slip twice and once says total rubbish!  First of all, how could Russians say «the Ukraine», if articles are altogether absent in the Russian language?? Secondly, what does “this part of the country” mean: which country? The Soviet Union? But in the USSR the English name of the Ukrainian SSR was all the same written with an article! Did he mean the Russian Empire? Then everything is correct: Ukraine IS a part of Russia, its outskirt – historically! And the language changes should take place naturally, eventually, and not forcibly with political purposes.

The former ambassador has, as I found out, committed one more act of violence in regard to the English grammar: he made the US government to introduce in diplomatic turnover the name “Kyiv” instead of “Kiev” for the Ukrainian capital, because, one again, “Kiev” was invented by “bloody Muscovites”! Although what, by God, have “Muscovites” to do with it, if “Kiev” is an English exonyme in use for centuries! It is the same as if the Russians would all of a sudden become indignant with English-speaking people calling their capital “Moscow” and demanded that they should start calling it “Moskva” instead!

One doesn’t even know whether to laugh or cry, really! American politicians ignore all the rules and regulations that do not serve their interests, and want everyone to jig to the tune, even in the linguistic sphere.

Helga Green