Literally the whole media switched spelling around this time.
iRaq and iRan are silly but the “Kyiv” stuff is different.
I still call it Kiev because all the TV people switching words on a dime freaked me out. It’s real shit when the entire media class just decides for geopolitical reasons the geographic name for a place everyone was used to using isn’t usable anymore.
they can do this one instantly, but scores of media outlets either took forever or haven’t even got Turkiye down yet
I still think a funny bit is just pretending to not accept the Cyrillic alphabet and calling it “Knib”
“Turkiye” would be fine, but that is not the official English name, it’s “Türkiye” which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe we should start referring to Japan as 日本 in English instead too /s
No seriously it seems insane to officially change the English name and make a big stink about it but use a letter that isn’t in the English alphabet? Just skip the umlaut wtf are you doing
The grocery stores in my country all made a big thing about renaming their “Chicken Kievs” to “Chicken Kyevs” it was so funny.
When the media says or implies that Russian culture doesn’t belong in Ukraine, don’t take it as a statement of fact, take it as a statement of intent. They’re priming people to accept ethnic cleansing.
It’s like the whole “Ukraine” vs “the Ukraine” in English that the media did the same thing for. Russian and Ukrainian don’t have definite articles. There is no such thing as “the” in either language. The thing they argue over between Russian and Ukrainian is what preposition to use when talking about something in the territory of Ukraine saying ‘на украине’ (~“na ookrayeenye”) versus ‘в украине’ (~“v ookrayeenye”) meaning essentially “on Ukraine” vs “in Ukraine.”
Presumed to be a legacy of an assumed origin of the name Ukraine coming from
- ‘у’ particle/prefix in certain contexts meaning kind of by/at/of/near
- and край (~“krai” similar to English “cry”) in contexts meaning ‘ridge/edge/side,’ with its adjective form крайний (~krainee) meaning ‘outermost’
so Украина (“Ookrayeenah”) under this assumed origin meaning something akin to ‘of the outer-edge (of the Russian empire)’ kind of like “borderland.” It is common place especially with older generations to use на украине instead of в украине, though it also often both get used interchangeably.
That’s its own whole mess of history, but US English doesn’t have, at all, the historical quirk of “on Ukraine” so it would’ve always been normal and proper to just say “in Ukraine;” and by making a thing about “Ukraine” vs “the Ukraine” they invented a new problem to then argue about that has no corollary in Russian or Ukrainian to start with.
Probably “the Ukraine” started in English because some anglo dipshit heard the preposition “na” as similar enough to “the” (and la/le for other romance languages if they even knew that) to just assume it was a definite article, and now they won’t shut up about it. It’s like the origin I heard from a Korean friend that yanks originally made the g*** slur for Koreans because anglos are so unworldly and pig-ignorant they heard “miguk” from Koreans, which literally means “USA/American,” and thought it was the Koreans calling themselves the slur, because they assumed “mi” part is like English “me” because, and I can not stress this enough, they are dumb as hell.
There was the same debacle in Poland between something happening “on Ukraine” vs “in Ukraine”. It have no real difference, the former is archaic grammar irregularity for some currently or previously bordering countries, for example: Ukraine, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia.
But there was suddenly entire shitstorm in media about it, that it refuse the status of country, it is playing into Putin propaganda etc. etc. it was a mirror thing of the Kiev vs Kyiv debacle in English which we didn’t have because pronouncing “Kyiv” is pretty hard for Poles so everyone is still using traditional name in Polish “Kijów”. Also of course nobody changed it for the rest of abovementioned countries.
it’s ironic too because nobody who’s complaining about that grammatical quirk with Kiev/Kyiv or “on Ukraine” vs “in Ukraine” seems to have an issue that the west-aligned countries calls Pridnestrovie the entirely different name “Transnistria” which actually does that thing of ‘refusing the status of the country’ because it just means “[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river)”
and also its doubly so because Pridnestrovians don’t want to be called that because it’s literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they did the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate)
The g-slur goes back to the Spanish-American War and then the Filipino-American War. Americans in the Philippines thought Filipino languages sounded like “guk guk buk buk” the same way they think Mandarin is “King Kong ling long.” It got shortened down to come up with the slur, which became more widespread when the Philippines tried to gain independence.
And because Americans are so racist, they used the same slur against Koreans and Vietnamese as though Asians are all interchangeable. Doesn’t surprise me they thought “miguk” was Koreans using the slur in a “Well of course they call themselves that! They recognize the superior white man,” kind of way.
also its funny cuz nobody gets mad at the germans for saying “die Ukraine”. In fact theres a bunch of country names in german that get used with a definite article, like die Slowakei, die Turkei, die Schweiz.
Isn’t that just how the language works though? Like, it sounds unnatural to say certain nouns without adding “the” to the front. Spanish does that too, it’s why Das Kapital is called El Capital in Spanish but just Capital in English.
Isn’t that just how the language works though? Like, it sounds unnatural to say certain nouns without adding “the” to the front
Well the “naturalness” argument feels a bit iffy to me, but in the context of a specific language community, over time, things stick I guess. Like why do germans (I rly should say germanophones since austrians and the swiss do exist) say “der Iran”, or “der Jemen”? Who came up with that? Now it probably feels natural to them, but it was never preordained.
Spanish does that too, it’s why Das Kapital is called El Capital in Spanish but just Capital in English.
Im sure someone more linguistically minded can give the real explanation but in regards to your Capital example, its a peculiar feature of English in relation to the other western european languages where certain abstract nouns are not used with their articles. Like for example in English you can say “Love wins”, but in German you cant say “Liebe gewinnt”, you say “Die Liebe gewinnt”.
It always annoys me how bent out of shape people get over pronunciation of city and place names in other languages. Some languages have different sounds and thus things are said differently.
The Chinese word for Australia is “Audaliya” and even the frothist of frothers don’t go complaining about it (I hope)
Chinese names for countries are cool. They try to be nice about it when there’s more than one set of characters for something that sounds right (America is from the characters for “beautiful country” instead of “mildew country”), but when that’s not possible you get really silly like Portugal being named “grape tooth.” (There are also countries with literal translations.)
Good point.
I will now start saying, ‘yidali’, ‘jianada’, ‘yingguo’, and ‘bumeiguo’.
There’s the other nickname that’s shorter and translates to backwards/rustic Australia
But Iran, Iran so far away
Iran, I couldn’t get away
