Thread: "B" and "HA"

Originally Posted by Oxygent

I'm quite sure that exception comes from old name of Ukrain - it used to be called not "Украина" but "Окраина", which means "the edge". So the natural preposition was "на" - "на окраине" ("on the edge"). Later it changed for some reason to "на Украине", and during the last several years some people from Ukrainian government started trying to change the preposition to "в Украине", like for all other countries. The grammatically correct version is "на Украине":

That's interesting. Could that also possibly explain why, until fairly recently, it was commonly referred to as "The Ukraine" in English ("the edge"?)

Originally Posted by Demonic_Duck

That's interesting. Could that also possibly explain why, until fairly recently, it was commonly referred to as "The Ukraine" in English ("the edge"?)

He-he! The Ukrainian goverment not only taught Russians how to speak Russian (в Украине) but also taught native English speakers how to speak English (The Ukraine)!