Writing about my dislike of the concept monarchy yesterday made me think that, certainly if I were British, I could label myself a republican, being someone who believes a republic centred around citizenship is a better system than a monarchy, dictatorship etc. I don’t tend to call myself a republican though, and there’s a good reason why. Continue reading
While writing about the word citizen, via denizen recently, I naturally thought of the word citizen in contrast to subject. Naturally, when describing people, they’re quite different. Continue reading
I was always fascinated by the word denizen as a child. It’s a word I, unsurprisingly, only ever encountered in writing, particularly in books leaning towards fantasy or science fiction. It was fascinating mainly because I assumed it had to have a very different meaning from citizen. Why else would the writer use the word, when they had the choice to use citizen? Continue reading
I’d never heard of Barbara L’Italien, an American politician with the Democratic party, before today. She was accidentally invited onto a Fox “News” programme instead of a Democratic supporter of ICE, the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. With L’Italien being a staunch critic of ICE, the interview didn’t exactly go as the hosts had planned: Continue reading
I’ll take any to be honest, I’m not fussy. Ah, but linguistically, which is best? Continue reading
About a day before the time of writing, President Donald Trump, of the United States of America, said the following, in relation to meddling in the 2016 election:
Football’s not coming home after all then. In fact, it’s probably going to France. Plucky England did very well to get to the semi-final of the World Cup, and they can be proud of getting so far, and working so hard, with a fairly limited team.
Well done England, but also, commiserations. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 