Hezbollians?
Posted on July 19, 2006 by Tito
At the Language Log, Benjamin Zimmer writes
Mark Liberman has observed that Bush’s penchant for forming toponyms (or demonyms) with the -ian suffix would, in fact, be one way of regularizing a particularly confusing aspect of English morphology. But his use of Hezbollian suggests that Bush would take this linguistic reform beyond the usual suspects, to groups classified by the U.S. as terrorist organizations. So what Bushian quasi-toponym can we expect next? Hamasian? Talibanian? How about Al-Qaedian? And let’s not forget Colombia’s FARCians, Peru’s Shining Pathians or Spain’s ETAnians. Suddenly these groups don’t seem so shadowy after all, made concrete and legible through the wonders of toponymic suffixation.
» Filed Under Language, Politics
