FAQ (was Re: TIPS)

[Chris Waigl]

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> I asked
>> Shouldn't we have an FAQ? No, I'm not volunteering to compile it.
>
> Ben Zimmer quipped:
>     >>>>>
> Well, the first question in the FAQ obviously should be:
>
> Should it be "Shouldn't we have an FAQ?" or "Shouldn't we have a FAQ?"?
>
>  <<<<<
>
> Yeah (sigh). I normally say /faek/, but my speech recognition software is
> most likely to understand that as "fact". But it recognizes /'ef'ey'kyuw/
> as
> "FAQ" without difficulty. -- That doesn't address what I had to do to get
> those phonemic representations in here, but I've already set up macros for
> that.
>
> Do we have a term for expressions like this? That is, abbreviations formed
> from initial letters and observed in the wild with both types of
> pronunciation: acronymic and initialistic. The only other one I know of
> offhand is ASAP, which I have heard pronounced /'ey,saep/ as well as
> /'ey'es'ey'piy/.

Two more datapoints in favor of the idea that the distinction between
acronym and abbreviation isn't always particularly clear.

The strangest acronym I've come across in a while is SOCCSKSARGEN, by the
way. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCCSKSARGEN>

Chris Waigl ([,EfEI'kjU] and ['EIs at p])
whose boss says "sequel" for SQL

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