# Analogous singular nominative forms of country names



## robbie_SWE

I took part in a discussion a while back on a different site about the validity of singular forms of country names. The person asking about this, believes that singular nominative forms, such as *Românie*, *Franță*, *Germanie*, *Italie*, *Rusie*, etc. should be added to declension tables. They found countless quotes on the Internet, along the lines of _"Alianța pentru o Românie Curată[…]"_, but I just can't come to terms with it being a standard or logical grammatical conclusion.

So my question to native speakers is, am I in the wrong here? I was taught that country names are special in this respect, but I haven't found any information about it out there. Can anyone shed some light on this?

robbie


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## farscape

robbie_SWE said:


> but I just can't come to terms with it being a standard or logical grammatical conclusion.



I'll not venture to offer a grammatical conclusion but these forms are "standard" enough:

Bucureștiul de altădată 
România de mâine 

So why not :
Un București necunoscut
O Românie nouă


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## robbie_SWE

farscape said:


> I'll not venture to offer a grammatical conclusion but these forms are "standard" enough:
> 
> Bucureștiul de altădată
> România de mâine
> 
> So why not :
> Un București necunoscut
> O Românie nouă



But is this a rule or an exception? Can you say "*O Turcie nouă*", "*O Indie democratică*" or "*O Americă liberală*"? They just sound weird to me.


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## farscape

robbie_SWE said:


> But is this a rule or an exception? Can you say "*O Turcie nouă*", "*O Indie democratică*" or "*O Americă liberală*"? They just sound weird to me.



If we're OK with "Ce-ți doresc eu ție //Dulce Românie" I suppose we have a start.

The examples you quoted sound perfectly OK to me.


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## robbie_SWE

farscape said:


> If we're OK with "Ce-ți doresc eu ție //Dulce Românie" I suppose we have a start.
> 
> The examples you quoted sound perfectly OK to me.



Some of them might sound OK, but are they standard? People say a lot of things, but it doesn't necessarily make them correct.
Do you know of an expert addressing this issue or some resource clearly stating how country names should be treated?

I mean, how does *Ucraină* sound? Or *Etiopie*, *Portugalie*, *Libie*, *Brazilie*, *Cubă*, *Chină*, *Canadă*, etc.? They all sound terrible to me.

robbie


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## farscape

No, I do not - sorry for my belated reply, I'm pretty jammed up at work and did not have time to research this. 

Until other members of the forum chip in  might be worth getting in touch with the team at dexonline.ro.

Here is an example from an online article published by Deutsche Welle, in Romanian: "... o nouă Rusie"


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## danielstan

farscape said:


> If we're OK with "Ce-ți doresc eu ție //Dulce *Românie*" I suppose we have a start.


This is in vocative mood, not nominative.

In my opinion the analogous singular/plural nominative forms of country names are extremely rare used in common speech, that's why they sound so wierd.
In fact the examples I know are whether from poetry or from journalism, thus in contexts where the author wants to get the audience astonished.

Another example that comes to my mind is the poem "În lume nu-s mai multe* Românii*" written in the '80s in a patriotard style.
See some explanations on page 10 here:
https://humanitas.ro/assets/media/in-lume-nu-s-mai-multe-romanii.pdf

Newspaper articles about "cele două *Germanii  *(RDG şi RFG)":
Polonia cere despăgubiri de război Germaniei, după ce Berlinul a afirmat că Nord Stream 2 este o datorie pentru invadarea Rusiei
RDG - un experiment eșuat de dictatură | DW | 07.10.2019


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## robbie_SWE

danielstan said:


> This is in vocative mood, not nominative.
> 
> In my opinion the analogous singular/plural nominative forms of country names are extremely rare used in common speech, that's why they sound so wierd.
> In fact the examples I know are whether from poetry or from journalism, thus in contexts where the author wants to get the audience astonished.
> 
> Another example that comes to my mind is the poem "În lume nu-s mai multe* Românii*" written in the '80s in a patriotard style.
> See some explanations on page 10 here:
> https://humanitas.ro/assets/media/in-lume-nu-s-mai-multe-romanii.pdf
> 
> Newspaper articles about "cele două *Germanii  *(RDG şi RFG)":
> Polonia cere despăgubiri de război Germaniei, după ce Berlinul a afirmat că Nord Stream 2 este o datorie pentru invadarea Rusiei
> RDG - un experiment eșuat de dictatură | DW | 07.10.2019



Thank you Danielstan, that's what I thought. I've also found that these forms sometimes look like the vocative therefore giving rise to some confusion.

 robbie


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## vincix

farscape said:


> Here is an example from an online article published by Deutsche Welle, in Romanian: "... o nouă Rusie"


I'd really refrain from quoting the Romanian Deutsche Welle. They don't speak proper Romanian. They're actually very funny in that sense, you can tell Romanian is not their native language. Just a random example I've just come across:
"După relatări privind apariţia de probleme de coagulare în urma administrării vaccinului, tot mai multe ţări au luat măsuri de precauţie."
or: "AstraZeneca și-a apărat vaccinul, pe fondul relatărilor despre complicații puse pe seama acestuia." (DW)

I also want to add that I find the single forms of country names perfectly correct, as long as they're used in proper contexts. I guess it also depends on how you define "standard".


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