Europe
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
view the rest of the comments
i suppose so, but calling it ukraine without an article in german just seems off to me. i don't like saying it, it feels wrong, and speech is often about vibes. in english I'm perfectly fine calling it ukraine. i guess it'll take a few years for me to adapt.
The vibes of "the Ukraine" are that it's a region rather than a self-sovereign country. That's why there's been a push to stop adding the the.
I understand it, but as a citizen from "The Netherlands" it has always felt a bit weird.
i see, that makes sense
Still, I think you are right. In German we put those articles for some Countries… including USA.
Well USA actually contains the word "The" when you expand the acronym.
If not officially, then at the very least by necessity of the English language
For English it's true that calling it "the Ukraine" feels like you're talking about a region instead of a country, because that's the (historical) reason for the article. So in English "the" does have that implication.
In German however, we use the article for very different, purely grammatical reasons: Every noun in German has one of three gramatical genders, that have nothing to do with its physical nature. A pouch isn't more male than a bag, but nonetheless, we say "der Beutel" and "die Tüte". The same applies to country names. Some are male (der Iran), some are neutral (das Syrien) and some are female (die Türkei). And for countries that are neutral, you just leave out the article in almost every case^1^. It has nothing to do with wether something is a region or an independent country.
A good illustration of this: In German the same country can sometimes be refered to in two different ways with two different genders. "Die USA^2^" is female*, "Das Amerika" is neutral. So you would say "ich fahre nach Amerika" but "ich fahre in die USA". Or an even more obvious case: The Netherlands are often called "Holland" in German, even though Holland is just one region in the Netherlands. But Holland is neutral and Niederlande female. So we say "ich fahre nach Holland" but "ich fahre in die Niederlande". Here the country has the article, while the region does not.
^1^ In some cases the neutral article shows again. For example, if you're talking about a specific version of a country: "Das Frankreich der 50er-Jahre" or "Das Spanien unter Franco"
^2^ The USA are female because they are plural, and every plural is female in German – "Der Mann" but "die Männer" – showing that gramatical gender has no physical reasoning.