Hi, Paul!  Recently you wrote in a message to Alexander Koryagin:

 AK>  -----Beginning of the citation-----
 AK>  Lawyer in Moscow, family of retired Marine Paul Whelan
 AK>  and U.S. government sources all say he is no spy, as
 AK>  his dual nationality is revealed
 AK>  ----- The end of the citation -----

 AK>  So we can change "not a" for "no"?

 ml>  you could and it wouldn't change the meaning... at
 ml>  least not as i read it...

 PQ>  I agree with Mark, though I would prefer it as the "no"
 PQ>  version looks like it implies a North American jingoism.

 PQ>  That could be my fault as we are exposed to a lot of
 PQ>  USofA news & entertainment here.  So much so that I am
 PQ>  currently enjoying a "cowboys's breakfast" of bacon,
 PQ>  beans, eggs, brown bread & coffee.  Yee-ha!

 PQ>  Ardith?  What say you...?


           WRT the meaning, I agree that it's essentially the same either way.

           WRT feeling swamped by USAian culture, you're not alone.  Canadians
often experience that too.  It could be argued that you were eating an English
breakfast... but I'm trying to get down to brass tacks here.  I see nothing in
the examples I can think of to indicate the "no" version is [esp. US]:


 I'm no plaster saint.

 I'm no raving beauty.

                               -- said by me & by various others I have known


 Q.  Who was that lady I saw you with last night?
 A.  That was no lady, that was my wife.

                               -- a joke I heard from my father, when I was a
                               kid and "lady" was not synonymous with "woman"


 "He is no gypsy, my father," she said,
 "But Lord of these lands all over."


                               -- from a song called THE WHISTLING GYPSY, AKA
                                  THE GYPSY ROVER, composed by Leo Maguire of
                                  Dublin during the 1950's


 They are no members of the common throng;
 They are all noblemen who have gone wrong.

                               -- from THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE by Gilbert and
                               Sullivan, first performed in 1879


           WRT connotation, Anton summarized neatly what I had in mind there:
the "no" version comes aross as stronger & more emotional to me as well.

           A lot of what we see & hear about USAians in general seems "larger
than life"... but just as not all Aussies sound like the Crocodile Hunter not
all USAians dress badly & demand hamburgers everywhere they go.  Those who do
things like that get more attention than those who don't & sometimes it seems
all North Americans (!) look alike from the other side of whichever ocean.  I
understand how you feel about "jingoism"... while as a Canadian I'd plead not
guilty.  It seems to me jingoism is patriotism carried to an extreme or... in
the words of my RANDOM HOUSE WEBSTER'S... proclaimed loudly & excessively.

           If the "no" version rubs you the wrong way, I think that's because
you see some exaggeration... as I do in what I quoted above.  Feelings may be
running high WRT the situation Alexander referred to, and I have noticed that
when people are reacting emotionally they tend to think in terms of good guys
vs. bad guys, us vs. them, and so forth.  In the last two examples I cited, a
person who knows the accused quite well is challenging the accuser(s) to look
more closely at the situation & draw conclusions on an individual basis.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)