• Bldck@beehaw.org
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    2 days ago

    Similar for The Ukraine which means “the frontier” in Russian and evokes the history of Muscovite imperialism over their frontier states

    • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 day ago

      The word “Ukraine” itself doesn’t mean anything in russian nor ukrainian, it’s just a name for a state

    • FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus
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      1 day ago

      For those wondering, Xinjiang, the province controlled by China where the Uyghurs are is named similarly. It literally means “new frontier” in Mandarin.

      Many Uyghurs prefer the name East Turkestan. (But ofc thats heavily repressed by the CCP).

    • ApertureUA@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      There’s no such thing as “The” in both Russian and Ukrainian, but what I’ve seen happen is pro-russian people intentionally saying “on (the) Ukraine” (as if “on the edge”) instead of “in Ukraine” to piss people off.

      • Bldck@beehaw.org
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        1 day ago

        Huh. TIL Slavic languages don’t have a definite article.

        So it’s this grammatical mess of Germanic definite articles attached to a Slavic word and the outcome is politically fraught

        • GreatRam@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I can’t speak to all Slavic languages but in mine it’s concatenated to the subject rather than being its own word