strathspey@strathspey.org:44543

Andrea Re

Re: Emcee

March 8, 2006, 1:36 a.m. (Message 44543, in reply to message 44535)

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)