Reflective

[Mark A. Mandel]

>From the Associated Press
(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2588280). (Thanks to Marc
Picard, whose post of this link to the American Name Society listserver
brought the article to my notice.)
     >>>>>

WASHINGTON - The Ukrainian capital of Kiev is now Kyiv, as far as the U.S.
government is concerned. And the State Department says the spelling change
has nothing to do with American hopes of wooing the one-time Soviet republic
more into the Western orbit.

About half of Ukraine's 47 million people are Russian speakers, and Kiev is
the Russian spelling.

Ukraine's Western-leaning President Viktor Yushchenko, elected on the wave
of the 2004 Orange Revolution's mass protests against election fraud, has
sought to take his nation out of Russia's influence and join NATO and the
European Union.

"I don't think this decision has anything reflective in it," State
Department spokesman Tom Casey said Thursday.

[...]

  <<<<<

Plainly, what is meant is "This decision doesn't reflect any aspect of the
political situation." But on the usual reading of the word, he is saying in
effect "We didn't think about it at all; we just went ahead and changed the
spelling." Pfui.

-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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