acronym (was re: uniting two old threads...)

[Wilson Gray]

Wow! That Marine general must have been some scholar of Chinese! ;-)

-Wilson

On 5/28/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: acronym (was re: uniting two old threads...)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Just to add to the complications of this issue:
> >
> >Do you accept as acronyms the practice in Hebrew of taking the
> >initial consonants of a phrase and inserting enough /ah/ vowels to
> >make the thing pronounceable?  e.g. "Zve Haganah l'Yisroel" (the
> >Israeli armed forces, literally "force defense for Israel" becomes
> >abbreviated as "ZHL" and pronunced as /zahal/.
>
> ...and Katz and Tanach (for the Old Testament) and so on; yes, for me
> these are classic acronyms, along with I[CH][TH]YS for the
> Christ/fish.
>
> >
> >And how do you classify "gung ho", which is extracted/assembled from
> >the Chinese phrase "Zhongguo Gongye Hezuo She"?
> >
> >     - Jim Landau
>
> I wouldn't know where to begin on that one.
>
> LH
>
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