Maybe not on topic, but I am amazed at how people who ostensibly are so passionate and supportive of Ukraine seemed to treat saying “Kiev” as being tantamount to having “Z” tattooed on my arse, because they seemingly didn’t know it was ever called anything else other than “Kyiv” before they supported current thing. When I mentioned “Kiev” is in our atlases at school, one claimed my education must have been when atlases also contained East Germany and Yugoslavia.
I’ve had at least two people accuse me of being le putin bot now for using the word Kiev and both fucked off as soon as I brought up the fact we called a breaded chicken cutlet with a garlic and herb filling a “Chicken Kiev” up until a month ago. I can only assume they didn’t know the “Kiev” refers to a city in Ukraine the entire 15 years they’ve been eating them prior to this situation.
Just why though? Why are libs so passionate about the transliteration of a city they didn’t even know existed a month ago?
To elaborate, articles usually are used to indicate gramatical gender, number and whether the following noun is specific or generic.
English has a,an,the. German has a lot. In most romance languages we have the specific or generic articles and then we change them for gramatical gender and number.