source: the turbolibs nearby who have had a Ukrainian flag on their house for three full years have at last taken the faded rag down. Ukraine will probably collapse now without their brave full-scale show of support

  • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    edit-2
    11 days ago

    Language stuff unrelated to politics because I couldn’t care less about which article is used for different countries: in Russian, the preposition “in” translates as “в” (pronounced like the English v) and is the one most commonly used for referring to countries. However, for reasons I don’t personally know, Ukraine and possibly other countries (idk lmao I don’t speak a lot of Russian) are talked of not “in”, but using the preposition “on” (на, sounds like English nah).

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      11 days ago

      It’s exactly same in Polish. It’s probably some kind of archaism from old slavic language since a lot of the old medieval contacts are “on” but nearly all of the newer ones are “in”

    • awth13 [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      11 days ago

      It’s just because the word Ukraine comes from “окраина”, which means “borderlands”, and in Russian we say “in a country” but “on a land”. Same explanation applies to what comrade Collatz_problem (sorry not sure how to @) says below – “на Руси” has a connotation of “on the land of Rus”.

      P.S. I personally don’t see a problem with saying “в Украине”, it is grammatically correct Russian that recognises Ukraine as a country.