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?
If you want some fun, say “the Ukraine” whenever possible.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get a stock lecture about how the “the” denies Ukrainians agency or something. Then you’ll get to ask, innocently, how any of this squares with the fact that neither Russian nor Ukrainian have articles.
Then you’ll get to explain wtf an article is.
lol I do the former, just to farm seethe. Care to elaborate on what an article is im thox ctx?
im thox ctx
I have no idea what that is, but an article is a part of speech like a, and, or the. Most Slavic languages don’t have these, which makes the policing of language on this issue extra absurd.
(I think Bulgarian and maybe a dialect of Slovene have certain articles. But not Ukrainian or Russian.)
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.
oh my bad, I meant to say “in this context”
And thank you for your answer! This explains everything :)
Because using Kyyiв instead of Kiev is the ultimate praxis, not sure how you don’t see this
I’m gonna start calling them racist for not using 汉字 when discussing Chinese cities.
