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I can't help but notice that some newsfolks have switched from saying Gaza or the Gaza strip to saying "the Gaza." Is there another one somewhere people were confusing Gaza with? Why have they started this?
Really? It sounds ridiculously bad to me. We don't talk about the Australia or the Beijing.
The only places I can think of where people usually do that are the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and the Hague. People used to say the Ukraine (and really just Ukraine still sounds funny to me), but then apparently in Ukrainian that "the" implied a diminuitive form of something so they quit.
Really? It sounds ridiculously bad to me. We don't talk about the Australia or the Beijing.
The only places I can think of where people usually do that are the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and the Hague. People used to say the Ukraine (and really just Ukraine still sounds funny to me), but then apparently in Ukrainian that "the" implied a diminuitive form of something so they quit.
Australia and Beijing did a lot more for the world than Gaza so not really comparable.
I hate it when people call "Ukraine" the Ukraine.
Australia and Beijing did a lot more for the world than Gaza so not really comparable.
I hate it when people call "Ukraine" the Ukraine.
There are some reasonable theories concerning why Ukraine is referred to with the definite article, 'the'.
One is that being derived from a common noun meaning borderland or march, it is semantically complete, if not necessary in its proper noun form, to be preceded with the definite article. (I consider this a weak hypothesis since Russian and Ukrainian are inflected languages without the definite article, and English speakers are generally ignorant of the etymology of the word 'ukraine'.)
Another is that its official name in English, prior to separating from the USSR, was 'The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic', and thus shortened.
Finally, in some continental European languages like French (which the English have had a slavish and unapologetic linguistic chubby for), the names of states and cities often employ a definite article. One may find this adopted into the English usage for countries and cities like The Bahamas, The Congo, The Hague (see the first argument concerning common nouns vis-a-vis Den Haag/Des Graven Hage), The Bronx, and The United States of America, and so forth and so on.
Whether this pertains to the use, The Gaza, I don't know.
Last edited by ABQConvict; 07-29-2014 at 03:20 PM..
Never heard of this The Gaza term before. In Spanish we say La franja de Gaza and Cisjordania for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But never, La Gaza. Anyway, maybe it's a new trend.
Never heard of this The Gaza term before. In Spanish we say La franja de Gaza and Cisjordania for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But never, La Gaza. Anyway, maybe it's a new trend.
I hadn't either until last week, and I thought okay it's just this one lone doofus. Then today I heard someone else saying it. It sounds almost unnatural.
Calling it "The Gaza" is the least of the area's problems. But I agree it might come from "The Gaza Strip" vs. "Gaza".
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