bakit ang philippines may "the"?

Marius

example, the philippines and china, hongkong, australia.. etc..

made in the philippines.
made in china. (not made in the china)
made in hongkong. (not made in the hongkong)
made in australia. (not made in the australia)


i live in the philippines.
i live in china. (not i live in the china)
i live in hongkong. (not i live in the hongkong)

Ischaramoochie

"the" Philippines is an archipelago which means that it embodies over 7000 islands each with its own distinct name. unlike other countries which have only one single lang mass which they would call under a mother name (eg. china, hongkong, australia etc..)

the term "philippines" is used as a collective so as not to confuse it with any one of the islands that it contains. hence, we would necessarily have to provide an article which would connote uniqueness and at the same time universality, which is satisfied by the article "the."

mikka

do we call Indonesia, "The" Indonesia?

raven23

Good point.

I think it's just a convention from the shortening of "the Philippine islands" just as we refer to the Cayman islands as "the Caymans".

Ischaramoochie

do we call Indonesia, "The" Indonesia?

no, but we call it "the indonesian isands" or, the entire region as "the indonesian region"

similarly, we call places in American region the "americas" or the unified states as "the united states of America"

Yuri_Prime

I think it has something to do with the people. The normal convension with English and Spanish noun usually goes like this...

American - Americano
Mexican - Mexicano
Italian - Italiano

etc....

Filipino is really a Spanish term, so when translated to English the end will be the same word minus letter "o".

Filipino - Philippine <singular>
Philippines <plural>

Although English speakers also use the term "Filipino" (plural:Filipinos), Philippine is also a proper term to refer to the people.

Philippines is the name of the country, and is also used to refer to the plural form of the name of its citizens. I think the word "the" is added to imply that the subject "Philippines" is not a human being, and therefore the nation.

Anyway it's just my thought. I'm not really sure if that is the case.




Find your Role-Playing
Stereotype at mutedfaith.com

freakster2k1

i think Raven answered the question

illuminatty

this baffles me too.

aside from the philippines, there are other countries that go with the article THE, aside from "the USA", there is "the UK"... there's also "the Netherlands" -- which is NOT an island.

heto pa...

--the ivory coast
--the USSR (but not "the russia")

oh well. no big deal.

freakster2k1

1. I can answer all of them why there is a THE except for the ivory coast because i dont know anything about it.

a. The (copying Russel) is a lazy article.

it really wants to say: Pople of the various groups that comprises _______

1. the US. Because of its history. 13 states joining in a confederation.

2. The UK. It is s collection of various island people that joined by force under the leadership of the King of england ( or Queen)

3. same with the UN and The commonwealth.

4. The USSR and the Netherlands <-- same reason.

5. however, italy should be like this too?

tequilapj

we add "the" to "philippines" because of the letter "s"

the philippines
the netherlands
the united statesof america
the virgin islandss
the cayman islands

in french, "aux" is added before the philippines, the US and the netherlands because these are considered "plural" nouns.
Thus, when you want to say "I am going to..." you add "the"; as in the following...

Je vais aux Philippines
Je vais aux Etats Unis
Je vais aux Pays Bas (Netherlands)

other countries, we use "en" (for "masculine" countries) and "de" (for "feminine" countries) (Je vais en France...etc...) (I hope I'm right, my French teacher would kill me...)

as for the United Kingdom and the former USSR, well, i think it's because we use "united" and "union" to describe a group of people or territories. we therefore need to use the definitive article "the".

lemme know if i'm making sense (or not...)

teletutubi

para yang pag-ibig.
walang rason.
ganun lang talaga.

dikya

parang yung "the" eraserheads. ....bakit nga ba may "the"?

incuboobs

ang galing nyo!!!



dapat siguro tawag sakin "the incuboobs":D:D:D

thehitman

The Hague?

Oh yeah, I'm The Hitman!

RALPH WALDO

Originally posted by mikka
do we call Indonesia, "The" Indonesia?

Further to Ischaramoochie's answer, we do not say "the Indonesia" because the suffix "-nesia" itself denotes an archipelago.

Some examples: Polynesia (a group of many islands), Micronesia (a group of small islands), and Indonesia (if my stocked knowledge serves me right, Indonesia was formerly known as the Dutch East Indies, hence a group of Indie islands... hmmm...).

If we want to remove the "the" from "the Philippines", maybe we can say "Philippinesia" or "United Philippine Islands." But that would be violating the Constitution already.

Ischaramoochie

UPI still needs the article "the"

Chase_Meridian

Originally posted by Ischaramoochie
UPI still needs the article "the"

EXACTLY.

RALPH WALDO

Yes, thanks for the correction Ischaramoochie. Bura bura. I'm so ***** talaga. Grabe.

jaypogi

tama yung sabi ni tequi...

sinabi na to nung teacher namin sa history.. pero hindi ako nakikinig dahil I hate history, sana nakinig ako, hindi ko naman kasing alam na ipopost rito sa PEx...

thebrain

Dapat pala "thebrains" ako!:D

freakster2k1

unless u r referring to the Russellian 'the'.