--- ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
>
> I notice a lot of people write fSU (by which I am
> assuming they mean
> former Soviet Union) or ex-USSR, etc. I can
> understand the use of former
> or ex in the case of entities that continue to exist
> (or were replaced
> by an equivalent one): ex-president Bill Clinton, my
> former spouse
> Leslie Nagsalltime. But it seems strange to use them
> otherwise. There is
> no Soviet Union today and the only Soviet Union was
> the former one!
>
ravi:
Limit search to: Subject & Body Subject Author Sort by: Date Rank Author Subject Reverse Sort
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A question for Joanna, Carrol and other language type people:
I notice a lot of people write fSU (by which I am assuming they mean former Soviet Union) or ex-USSR, etc. I can understand the use of former or ex in the case of entities that continue to exist (or were replaced by an equivalent one): ex-president Bill Clinton, my former spouse Leslie Nagsalltime. But it seems strange to use them otherwise. There is no Soviet Union today and the only Soviet Union was the former one!
---
That's 'cuz the USSR _was_ replaced by a roughly equivalent entity: the Commonwealth of Independent States. I personally use CIS for that,* and former USSR to refer to the CIS plus the Baltic States. They all share mainy things in common: a common power and transport network, a common lingua franca, a roughly shared political history, and a roughly shared common culture.
* That is, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Georgia.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com