Ramblings-n-Writings

Archive for April 10th, 2008

I was working with a student tonight, and he asked a simple grammatical question that gave me reason to stop and think. In a sentence, he had the phrase “the land.” He asked if he changed it to “Russia” would he leave “the”? At first I thought it an odd question with an obvious answer. Then I realized that for some countries we do use “the” and for others we don’t.

For example, we say “the United States of America” or “the British Isles” or “the Philippines.” On the other hand, we don’t say “the Russia” or “the Britain” or “the Portugal” or “the Kenya”…you get my point.

Why is that? Is there a pattern with the ‘s’ ending (states, isles, philippines)? If so, how does something like “the Caribbean” fit in?