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Emcee
For Fiona and the others who wondered.... here are my 2 cents on the development of the English language (and I beg your pardon to start with). 1) The English language, on both sides of the Atlantic has an obsession about shortening words and creating acronyms of compound words. The same does not apply to, for example, romance languages. Certainly not to Italian, nor, as far as I know, French or Spanish. There are hypothesis as to why the English language has this tendency, but let's not get too technical (and it is late at night) 2) In creating shorter words or, even worst, acronyms, people tend to forget what the abbreviation stands for. Even easy things like QC (or even better KC) are lost to most people. Working as a translator I can assure you that acronyms can make any text unintelligible, unless you are one of the chosen few who know what the letters stand for. 3) Since the origin of the word is quickly lost, the acronym becomes a word in its own right and in doing so it will have to be spelled one way or another, hence "emcee". I'll try and think of similar transformations and keep u posted. Former acronyms could be: laser, sonar, ram and so on, but they are not as interesting since the spelling has not changed. Andrea (fae Dundee, but not an Englishe native speakereh)
Acronym's have been the bane of my life since I joined the IT department at work where everything is referred to in Acronyms. I had to get to grips with the PID, SOR, BRD, FRS, SDS etc. etc. etc. The lowest point was when I sat through a whole hour of a meeting puzzling over the chairman's first sentence: "And we will need a TLA for this product!" "TLA? TLA?" I thought. "Trans-Lunar Altitude? Terminal Language Application? Tired, Listless and Apathetic?" I eventually worked out that TLA meant "Three Letter Acronym" TTFN (that's an FLA no doubt!) Graham Hamilton
On Wednesday 08 March 2006 04:08, xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote: > In a message dated 3/7/2006 7:38:29 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > xxxxxx.xx@xxxxxx.xxx writes: > > Even easy things like QC (or > even better KC) are lost to most people > > > QC to means quality control. Where does the K come in? > Sylvia Miskoe, Concord, NH USA King's council/Queen's council? (just a foreigner's guess :) Remco
_Sophie wrote_ (mailto:xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xx) : "Half a million cars in Switzerland have got VD on their number plates..." I used to think that STD meant subscriber trunk dialling but - perhaps because we've all got that kind of STD these days - it now means something else. Not to be confused with SCD, of course (says he, in a rather pathetic attempt to bring things back on topic.) Chris, New York.
| I eventually worked out that TLA meant "Three Letter Acronym" | | TTFN (that's an FLA no doubt!) | | Graham Hamilton One of the better examples of the humor in the computer industry's "jargon file" is that the correct acronym in this case is ETLA, which stands for Extended Three-Letter Acronym. It's a great parody of how such things are often done. And note that, just as TLA is itself a TLA, ETLA is also an ETLA. -- _, O John Chambers <:#/> <xx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx> + <xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx> /#\ in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, Earth | |
On 3/9/06, Pia <xxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > I too find acronyms annoying, and have and will stress in committees that I > find acronyms in minutes, reports and general speech during meetings > unacceptable as it delays and distracts the thought process. The research has shown that the acronyms do cause the breaks in the thought process if they are unknown or conflicting with other meanings (like the QC discussed). However, once you know what the acronym means for the context, it has its own semantic load and actually helps out by triggering concept parsing faster. And the same applies to longer phrases such as Mayday, which is recognised without having to know the French original. In the IT (sorry, information technology) world, the abstructions are so high and piled on each other, that spelling everything out may really get in a way of conversation. Whether it is the same for other fields I don't know, but I suspect it might. Regards, Alex.
