# Influence of acronyms in culture



## sinclair001

The influence of the endless and growing new acronyms are impressive in our everyday life.
An acronym is useful in the way it releases a big amount of information in a short time, but can impair the communication seeding the language with ideological shortcuts.
¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?


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## omedina

sinclair001 said:


> The influence of the endless and growing new acronyms are impressive in our everyday life.
> An acronym is useful in the way it releases a big amount of information in a shor time, but can impair the communication seeding the language with ideological shortcuts.
> ¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?


It could be true.
Please, check this link, 
http://www.acronyma.com/.


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## sinclair001

According to wikipedia, the acronyms reflects the uprising ot the technological and scientifical knowledge, thus depicting an analythical way to face and deal the world.
Curiously, western languages use more acronyms than eastern languages
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...+"western+languages"&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=co


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## sinclair001

BTW Nice link, omedina.


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## Forero

This question is complicated by the fact that "acronym" is a term used for different kinds of things -

Are we talking about terms like MASER, LASER, RADAR (all technical in origin), and SNAFU (an inside joke and euphemism), pronounced as words but with no other meaning than what they abbreviate?

Or "acronyms" like FBI or ATF, that are really just abbreviations "pronounced" by naming the letters but still written without the periods (full stops)?

Or the "magical" type of acronyms that were words before they were acronyms but take on new meaning as abbreviations, e.g. SPOOL = simultaneous peripheral operations on line?

Or the "partially pronounceable" type like "VSAM" pronounced "vee-sam"?

Or the kind that seems to need its last element repeated as a word: "PIN number" = "personal identification number (number)", "ATM machine" = "automated teller machine (machine)"?

Or the political type like USAPATRIOT with hidden implications that can be used as weapons (newspeak)?

Some acronyms arise quite naturally, especially those of the LASER variety, but some seem forced no matter how many times we hear/see them.


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## Athaulf

sinclair001 said:


> The influence of the endless and growing new acronyms are impressive in our everyday life.
> An acronym is useful in the way it releases a big amount of information in a shor time, but can impair the communication seeding the language with ideological shortcuts.



I wouldn't say so. Acronyms become a regular part of speech when it's necessary to find convenient terms for new items and concepts that can be described only using tediously long-winded phrases, which just beg to be shortened. In times of rapid technological and/or social change, such as ours, it's inevitable that many acronyms will become regular words. I'm not aware of any examples where this phenomenon impedes communication rather than facilitating it. 



> ¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?


Here's an interesting fact: acronyms formed by merging the initial _syllables _of words have been characteristic of various totalitarian regimes in the 20th century -- take for example Gestapo, Comintern, Stasi, Sovnarkom, etc. On the other hand, acronyms formed from initial _letters_ have been more or less uniformly popular around the world, both in totalitarian and liberal systems (and those somewhere inbetween); I don't think it's even necessary to point out any examples of those. Frankly, I don't know what to make out of this observation.


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## fenixpollo

Mexico's current political structure is not one I would call totalitarian, but the acronyms used for many (if not most) governmental agencies are formed by the first letters of their titles, rather than the initials of the titles... for example, MINGOB (Ministerio de Gobernación).  I think that this has more to do with custom, culture and language than it does with totalitarianism.





			
				sinclair said:
			
		

> An acronym is useful in the way it releases a big amount of information in a shor time, but can impair the communication seeding the language with ideological shortcuts.


 The same can be said of other abbreviations in the language, such as contractions or pronunciation changes that are verbal shortcuts. Another example is how most Americans under the age of 25 tend to end every sentence with "and whatever" or "and stuff", which to them is a way to finish a sentence in an open-ended way, but to me seems phony and detracts from their ability to communicate.

In short, acronyms are just one of the ways in which language is evolving... and language often evolves forms that are more _convenient_, not more _effective_.


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## palomnik

I'll go on record as being opposed to acronyms, regardless of the type.

To me, they create a class of words that neither describe the items in question, nor typify what service they perform or what they do or represent. In fact, they are not related to anything at all, and they do violence against the very concept of word formation.

I guess I was born 100 years too late.


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## Forero

palomnik said:


> I'll go on record as being opposed to acronyms, regardless of the type.
> 
> To me, they create a class of words that neither describe the items in question, nor typify what service they perform or what they do or represent. In fact, they are not related to anything at all, and they do violence against the very concept of word formation.
> 
> I guess I was born 100 years too late.


 
Hi, palomnik.

I have a distaste for most acronyms myself, but I would have trouble _not_ saying RADAR, SONAR, and LASER.  I say "(cellular) telephone", not "cel", but "sound detection and ranging" is just too long.


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## palomnik

Yes, Forero, you're right of course, and in any case the genie is out of the bottle.

Still, I can't escape the feeling that this is just one more thing symptomatic of how gradually we are letting machines run our society.


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## fenixpollo

palomnik said:


> Still, I can't escape the feeling that this is just one more thing symptomatic of how gradually we are letting machines run our society.


 Why are you assuming that acronyms are a symptom or result of technological advancement?  Many acronyms predate the industrial revolution, including HMS and USA.  Many others are modern inventions, but seem to be unrelated to technology -- such as SWMBO, which is an acronym for "my wife". 

In reality, acronyms are simply another form of abbreviation or contraction, and I see their use as more related to the ways in which we communicate than to technology. Obviously, however, technology has revolutionized the way we communicate (the telephone and telegraph being two key examples), but I think acronyms are related to technology, not a product of it.


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## Athaulf

fenixpollo said:


> Mexico's current political structure is not one I would call totalitarian, but the acronyms used for many (if not most) governmental agencies are formed by the first _[syllables]_ of their titles, rather than the initials of the titles... for example, MINGOB (Ministerio de Gobernación).  I think that this has more to do with custom, culture and language than it does with totalitarianism.



It could be that my impression is mistaken. A possible reason for the prevalence of such syllable-based acronyms in totalitarian terminology is that Russians and Germans are particularly fond of them for some reason unrelated to the ideologies that blossomed there in the 20th century. This style was copied in other countries by the domestic adherents of these ideologies, even in languages in which they sound horrible, like Croatian. 

George Orwell made some interesting observations about acronyms of this kind  (from an appendix to _1984_ -- I hope this is within the permitted quotation limits):[In] the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. [...] It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words _Communist International_, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word _Comintern_, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. ​


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## palomnik

Athaulf, you and George Orwell are expressing exactly what I believe. Thanks!

I might add that I never understood the proliferation of acronyms in Russian, since I don't see how they can be anything but egregious in a highly inflected language - probably akin to what you mean about Croatian.


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## Etcetera

palomnik said:


> I might add that I never understood the proliferation of acronyms in Russian, since I don't see how they can be anything but egregious in a highly inflected language - probably akin to what you mean about Croatian.


Most natives speakers of Russian don't understand that, either.
Acromys were extremely popular in this country after 1917. Almost every new Soviet realia was called by an acronym; the ultimate result is that the language became "dirty", I'd say. Most of the acronyms sound just funny, but, unfortunately, not amusing. 
Luckily, the majority of them fell from use in the later years of the Soviet regime. And should a person use them now, he or she would be immediately regarded as a pure "homo soveticus".


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## palomnik

Etcetera: Likewise those unfortunate women with names like Октябрина and Электрификация.


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## fenixpollo

palomnik said:


> Athaulf, you and George Orwell are expressing exactly what I believe. Thanks!


 Actually, if I understand Athaulf's post correctly, he was suggesting that while he likes Orwell's ideas about acronyms changing the meaning of the words that they represent, he was admitting that acronyms may not inherently be evil.  

Here's an example of an acronym that has the opposite effect, in my opinion, of the one that Orwell describes: CIA.


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## cyanista

Etcetera said:


> Most natives speakers of Russian don't understand that, either.
> Acromys were extremely popular in this country after 1917. Almost every new Soviet realia was called by an acronym; the ultimate result is that the language became "dirty", I'd say. Most of the acronyms sound just funny, but, unfortunately, not amusing.
> Luckily, the majority of them fell from use in the later years of the Soviet regime. And should a person use them now, he or she would be immediately regarded as a pure "homo soveticus".


Sorry, Etcetera, but your comment is a bit one-sided. "Syllable" acronyms are still very widely used in Russian; of course we don't use Comsomol or Politburo all that often  but you are forgetting that not all the acronyms weren't exclusively connected with  Soviet realia: спецкор, эсминец, _подлодка, _рация, _физкультура, _пединститут, госэкзамен, главпочтамт, медосмотр and so on and so forth. There is even a number of new acronyms based on the same principle: оргтехника, сбербанк (there are surely many more). I'm not surprised they got so popular - apart from being easy to write/pronounce they still look like "real" words.   I mean, they are spelt lowercase, have a distinct gender and can be easily declined - unlike most initialisms. (Does it justify their popularity in a highly inflected language, palomnik?)

German is another matter altogether: it has loads of very long words so no wonder the methods to abbreviate them have been perfected throughout history. I can't say how impressed I am with their ingenuity.  Just a few examples: 
Kita - *Ki*nder*ta*gesstätte (kindergarten)
Stabi - *Sta*ats*bi*bliothek (state library)
Schiri - *Schi*eds*ri*chter (referee)
Vokuhila - *vo*rne-*ku*rz-*hi*nten-*la*ng (short in the front, long in the back - about an eighties haircut  )
Simply endearing!


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## Athaulf

cyanista said:


> Sorry, Etcetera, but your comment is a bit one-sided. "Syllable" acronyms are still very widely used in Russian; of course we don't use Comsomol or Politburo all that often  but you are forgetting that not all the acronyms weren't exclusively connected with  Soviet realia: спецкор, эсминец, _подлодка, _рация, _физкультура, _пединститут, госэкзамен, главпочтамт, медосмотр and so on and so forth. There is even a number of new acronyms based on the same principle: оргтехника, сбербанк (there are surely many more).



I was just going to post a similar reply -- although one doesn't see the old commie acronyms that much, any time I read a Russian newspaper, I see a bunch of syllable-based acronyms, many of them obviously coined only in recent years. Even some rather sinister sounding old ones are still used frequently (e.g. _госбезопасность_). 



> I'm not surprised they got so popular - apart from being easy to write/pronounce they still look like "real" words.   I mean, they are spelt lowercase, have a distinct gender and can be easily declined - unlike most initialisms. (Does it justify their popularity in a highly inflected language, palomnik?)


On the other hand, in Croatian, whose grammar is extremely similar to Russian, such acronyms are virtually nonexistent. The only exceptions are the communist ones that were imported or calqued from Russian, but even those have always sounded awful (e.g. _Informbiro_, _dijamat_... yuck ). Some of those have also survived in the names of certain companies, but sound OK only because nowadays nobody knows where those names came from.

For some reason, we prefer letter-based acronyms, which we then stretch into declinable nouns in the spoken language. For example, _SDP _(_Socijal-demokratska partija_) becomes _esdepe_, which is then declined as _esdepe_, _esdepea_, _esdepeu_... Ugly, but we definitely prefer it to syllable-based acronyms.


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## Athaulf

fenixpollo said:


> Actually, if I understand Athaulf's post correctly, he was suggesting that while he likes Orwell's ideas about acronyms changing the meaning of the words that they represent, he was admitting that acronyms may not inherently be evil.


 
Yes, what I had in mind is a possible explanation that Russian and German are inherently friendly to such acronyms for purely linguistic reasons, and that totalitarian terminology became rich with them because it largely originated in those languages (and not the other way around). 



> Here's an example of an acronym that has the opposite effect, in my opinion, of the one that Orwell describes: CIA.



In my opinion, changing people's thoughts through manipulation of language has shown to be far less effective than Orwell feared in his day. But that's a complex topic in its own right.


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## Athaulf

palomnik said:


> I'll go on record as being opposed to acronyms, regardless of the type.
> 
> To me, they create a class of words that neither describe the items in question, nor typify what service they perform or what they do or represent. In fact, they are not related to anything at all, and they do violence against the very concept of word formation.
> 
> I guess I was born 100 years too late.





palomnik said:


> Still, I can't escape the feeling that this is just one more thing symptomatic of how gradually we are letting machines run our society.




However, I'm surprised that you give acronyms such a prominent place when contemplating the sources of the contemporary corruption of language. Even if I take the most hostile stance towards the proliferation of acronyms, there are things that I find infinitely more ugly and irritating. A prime example would be the terminology that is nowadays obligatory to use when trying to describe institutions, events, people, etc. in favorable light in the context of the modern business, acedemia, and government. All those meaningless phrases involving "excellence", "leadership", "innovation", "sustainability", etc., completely divorced from the meaning those words  actually (used to?) have, result in a language that's closer to Orwell's idea of "duckspeak" than anything I've ever seen. Fortunately, people are seeing through it, and the popular culture has already responded with derison.


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## Grefsen

fenixpollo said:


> Why are you assuming that acronyms are a symptom or result of technological advancement?  Many acronyms predate the industrial revolution, including HMS and USA.  Many others are modern inventions, but seem to be unrelated to technology -- such as SWMBO, which is an acronym for "my wife".



For the record, SWMBO is an acronym for *"                                                                                                                                                                                She Who Must Be Obeyed."    *Fortunately for me I have no familiarity whatsoever with this acronym and actually had to look it up.


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## Forero

Grefsen said:


> For the record, SWMBO is an acronym for *"                                                                                                                                                                                She Who Must Be Obeyed."    *Fortunately for me I have no familiarity whatsoever with this acronym and actually had to look it up.



This reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's Neolithic family in "How the First Letter Was Written": "Man-who-does-not-put-his-foot-forward-in-a-hurry", "Lady-who-asks-a-very-many-questions", and their girl-daughter "Small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked".  Actually the name "Amanda" is a Latin gerundive ("Girl who is to be loved").


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## Etcetera

cyanista said:


> Sorry, Etcetera, but your comment is a bit one-sided. "Syllable" acronyms are still very widely used in Russian; of course we don't use Comsomol or Politburo all that often  but you are forgetting that not all the acronyms weren't exclusively connected with  Soviet realia: спецкор, эсминец, _подлодка, _рация, _физкультура, _пединститут, госэкзамен, главпочтамт, медосмотр and so on and so forth.


Ough! You're right, of course.
I was somehow thinking only about those typically Soviet acronyms which undoubtedly spoil the language.


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## palomnik

Athaulf, I agree that there are worse things than acronyms. _Apropos _of your argument of "obligatory terminology" I remember being asked to translate some publicity material for an American insurance company from English to Russian back in 1989 in hopes of setting up a joint venture. The material was untranslatable into anything that made sense, since it consisted totally of "hype" which sounded like double talk, almost gibberish, in Russian.

Of course, the Soviets had their own form of "hype" although they didn't apply it to private companies. What's more, I fear that the article would translate quite easily today.


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## sinclair001

¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?
In the political setting, there was some interesting acronyms of imperial cultures, creating somehow the spirit of a time:
*SPQR:* in Rome, it meant _Senatus Populusque Quirinus Romanus_. The Senate, the People and the Poles of Rome. 
The imperialism of Rome was brutal, so Tacitus use to say "_Soliditudinem faciunt, pacem apellant"_ "they make deserts and they called it peace".
*AEIOU*: _Austria Est Imperare Orbi Universum_: Austria will rule the entire world. Motto of the Habsburg dinasty.
(I am not sure about the english version of AEIOU)


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## sinclair001

Another acronyms are lasting influent and could be deemed good sign of a culture, namely ICHTUS _Iesus Christus Teos Uios Soter_.


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## Athaulf

sinclair001 said:


> ¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?
> In the political setting, there was some interesting acronyms of imperial cultures, creating somehow the spirit of a time:
> *SPQR:* in Rome, it meant _Senatus Populusque Quirinus Romanus_. The Senate, the People and the Poles of Rome.
> The imperialism of Rome was brutal, so Tacitus use to say "_Soliditudinem faciunt, pacem apellant"_ "they make deserts and they called it peace".
> *AEIOU*: _Austria Est Imperare Orbi Universum_: Austria will rule the entire world. Motto of the Habsburg dinasty.
> (I am not sure about the english version of AEIOU)



There are also many other examples of widely used pre-modern acronyms, e.g. INRI, K.u.K., or A.D. But the difference is that none of those entered  the everyday language, or even any area of specialized terminology, as words with a life of their own, words that can be used without any thinking about the full expression that they are supposed to represent. I really can't think of any pre-modern examples of such coinage (A.D. started being used like that only in modern times).


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## Forero

sinclair001 said:


> Another acronyms are lasting influent and could be deemed good sign of a culture, namely ICHTUS _Ies*oú*s Christ*ó*s T*h*eo*ú* Uiós Sóter_.



I've always liked that one, but I have definitely seen it misused in modern times. 

I wonder if the history of that one is as we have been told.  There seem to have always been competing denominations with competing interpretations.


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## sinclair001

Forero:
Thanks for the accents, the acronym really deserves it.


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## sinclair001

Another acronym coming from the earliest times of christianity is that one of IHS "_Iesus Hominis Salvatore_" (or Iesus Hominum Salvatore) which become widely used by church.
_(As far as I checked it out, Iesus in latin is accentless.)_


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## sinclair001

To have an idea of the impact of acronyms across different branches of knowledge, some figures of a searching in google 14 Jun 07:
Acronym     33´900.000 entries
Acronyms    20´600.000 entries
Acronyms world   1´330.000 entries
Acronyms books   1´280.000 entries
Acronyms internet 1´280.000 entries
Acronyms food      1´240.000 entries
Acronyms science 1´230.000 entries
Acronyms langauge 1´220.000 entries
Acronyms life 1´220.000 entries
Acronyms law     1´190.000 entries
Acronyms religion  1´190.000 entries
Acronyms politics  1´170.000 entries
Acronyms computing  1´160.000 entries
Acronyms weapons  1´150.000 entries
Acronyms movies  1´150.000 entries
Acronyms human  1´150.000 entries
Acronyms sex   1´150.000 entries
Acronyms words 1´140.000 entries
Acronyms biology 1´130.000 entries
Acronyms animals 1´120.000 entries
Acronyms chemistry  1´100.000 entries
Acronyms dentistry  1´080.000 entries
Acronyms medicine  1´070.000 entries
Acronyms drugs  1´070.000 entries
Acronyms songs  839.000


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## Sepia

We have some funny ones in German, where I couldn't really say if they are acronyms or slang - but they are typical for our culture and have evolved because some words are really too long:

One is 

AZUBI - the full word is "Auszubildende" = an apprentice 

second one

KITA = "Kindertagesstätte" - a modern word for Kindergarten

We use lots of such words/acronyms because lots of words that come out of the construction engineer's studios or from the authorities are simply too long to be used in a normal conversation.


--------------

(I've always admired the Canadians for being able to almost making a pronouncable word out of "arsee-empee".)


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## e.ma

I think acronyms are not possible in Chinese.

In Japanese there are nice shortenings on anglicisms, such as:

"pasocon" (from "*pa*a*so*naru *con*piutaa", personal computer, PC);
"rimocon" (from "*rimo*tu *con*turoru", remote control).


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## e.ma

e.ma said:


> I think acronyms are not possible in Chinese.
> 
> In Japanese there are nice shortenings on anglicisms, such as:
> 
> "pasocon" (from "*pa*a*so*naru *con*piutaa", personal computer, PC);
> "rimocon" (from "*rimo*tu *con*turoru", remote control).



I'd like to say it really doesn't add that much to understanding. You need to know hugh amounts of code to manage acronyms


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## sinclair001

¿Does the acronyms reflect the style and organic thinking of one culture?
IMHO I think yes !!!
Well, now in our society of knowledge, is good use to release big amounts of information, and the widespread culture of the net, poses its own big deal of acronyms, reflecting the spirit or _zeitgeist _of our times.
If the spirit of the _Homo zappiens could be _defined in three words could be "_faster and faster_" or maybe "_the most quick_". In this way, the net is quite fruitful in list of acronyms, such as:
http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm
http://deakialli.blogspot.com/2003/10/netiquette.html
The use of acronyms grew rapidly on the Internet and created a new lingo, known as *shorthand*: it is when the letters are pronounced one-by-one and not as a word (for example, FYI is pronounced "F-Y-I" and BRB is pronounced "B-R-B"). One of the reasons why shorthand and acronyms became so popular in online world is because they are fun to use and take less effort to type.


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