Back when I was getting my English MA at the University of Utah, I tutored in the Writing Center. There, I assisted many brilliant grad students from around the world–China, Russia, India, Japan, Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle-east–with their essays, theses, dissertations, and grant proposals. Although Writing Center tutors are trained to focus primarily on organization and content, I would inevitably end up helping clients with their grammar too, especially if they were non-native English speakers. Overall, I was competent enough at explaining most principles of English grammar–except when it came to indefinite articles: the, a, and an.

We would be combing through some thesis chapter, when I would say “you need a ‘the’ before this noun,” to which the international student would naturally ask, “How come?” I in turn could only stammer, “I don’t know. I wish I could explain it. You just do. Trust me.” I brought up my difficulties with explaining articles to other Writing Lab tutors, who all confessed themselves just as flummoxed by the question as I was.

I even came to recognize indefinite articles as perhaps the shibboleth marker between native- and non-native English speakers; it is the last grammar principle that almost any ELL student ever grasps. I saw that a non-native speaker could master spelling, syntax, prepositions, conjunctions, and just about any other grammar principle you can name, but a single misplaced “the” will give them away; while conversely, a native-speaker can be an absolute embarrassment to the English language, endlessly botching their spelling, punctuation, syntax, capitalization, and everything else–but they will still always, and I mean always, put “the” in the correct place. (They may even spell it “da,” as in “u da bomb!”, but it will still be correctly situated.)

It took me two solid years to figure out the rule for English articles, and it hit me all at once while I was working with an Indian engineering student one day who, as ever, asked why he needed a “the” in one situation but not in another. I was about to stammer my usual apology and confession of ignorance when, in a rush of inspiration, I sketched out the following:

Singular Noun=use article

Plural Noun=don’t use article

Singular Proper-name=don’t use article

Plural Proper-name=use article.

I had solved it! I couldn’t believe it! That’s why we say “The car is red” but also “Cars have 4 wheels”–the former noun is singular, while the latter noun is plural. It’s also why we don’t say “The Texas” or “The California,” but we do say “The United States of America”–the former proper-names are single states, while the latter proper-name is a collection of multiple states.

And it is why, I just realized this week, why the Russian government is insistent on calling it “The Ukraine,” while Ukrainians themselves are insistent on calling it simply, “Ukraine”–because there is only one Ukraine, not multiple. Hence, if Ukraine is a proper name, then it is ipso facto a sovereign nation, and therefore lacks the article. But if it is “the Ukraine,” then that implies it is not a proper-name but a noun–a region, a mere descriptor, not a real country at all.

Putin, you will recall, has argued repeatedly that the very concept of “Ukraine” as a separate and independent nation is a historical fiction artificially created by the collapse of the Soviet Union–that the Ukraine has always been but a region of Russia itself, and by rights should be again. Indeed, his entire “special military operation” began a month ago under the assumption that the Ukraine would quickly collapse before his military onslaught, that the Russian military would be greeted with flowers as liberators, since of course the Ukraine was always a natural part of Russia to begin with.

The Ukrainians, needless to say, have vehemently disagreed; they have ferociously resisted the “the.” And real human beings have suffered and died based on where the “the” goes.

Don’t ever say that grammar doesn’t matter. Alma 37:6 of the Book of Mormon reads, “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” Likewise, the fates of entire nations can pivot on the indefinite article.