Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Ultra-connotationalist
According to Western media reports (e.g.), last Sunday's elections in Serbia were a contest between a pro-European alliance and the ultra-nationalist Radical Party.
Don't know about you but ultra-nationalist has a decidedly rabid ring to my delicate ear. Those with similar political views in Britain go by the rather more cerebral epithet Eurosceptic.
Patriotic is more salubrious still but, like God, seems to exist only in the US.
The substantive difference between these terms, as far as I can make out, is roughly that between astronaut and cosmonaut.
Which fits them nicely into Bertrand Russell's paradigm of irregular conjugation:
"I am a patriot, you are a Eurosceptic, he is an ultranationalist".
Don't know about you but ultra-nationalist has a decidedly rabid ring to my delicate ear. Those with similar political views in Britain go by the rather more cerebral epithet Eurosceptic.
Patriotic is more salubrious still but, like God, seems to exist only in the US.
The substantive difference between these terms, as far as I can make out, is roughly that between astronaut and cosmonaut.
Which fits them nicely into Bertrand Russell's paradigm of irregular conjugation:
"I am a patriot, you are a Eurosceptic, he is an ultranationalist".
