CIA (codes, id ´s, and acronyms)

[Dan Parvaz]

PHP is an example of a recursive acronym, one of the cuter things to come
out of the Open Source movement (other examples are "GNU's Not Unix" and
"PINE Is Not Elm"). The formal syntacticians among us, at least, should
appreciate recursion :-)

-Dan.

On 9/5/07, Helle Lohmann <helle.lohmann at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> quite interesting and refreshing to read all that stuff about codes, id´s,
> acronyms, abbreviations and, at last, language and communication as a whole.
>
> I think one can summarize many things by reminding to be, when
> communicating, as explicit as possible and not more explicit than necessary.
> If you are managing a database of tons of languages, you need clear codes
> and / or some "meta language", be it English or something else. If you are
> talking to humans, you should take into account what they might know and
> what not, in general you should always introduce things you are talking
> about, esp. when using abbreviations, in clear words: reflect your
> "me-here-now"-origo for making yourself understandable. But you should not
> introduce too much if you are not talking to machines.
>
> Linguists for spoken language have learned to identify "API" with "IPA"
> when encountering those who have been educated for Romance languages.
>
> If you are programming for computers, you might know that "PHP" stands for
> "PHP Hypertext Processor", i.e. you cannot really resolve the acronym
> "PHP" itself; and that what "Perl" (in the beginnings: "Pearl") stands for
> has changed many times, now officially being an abbreviation without
> anything it abbreviates and so being an example for those acronyms that are
> no abbreviations (any more) or for a backronym or anacronym (see, e.g.
> wikipedia for those things).
>
> I´m sure that there is a mailing list especially for those questions, but
> also without definite answers. Nevertheless, one should think about those
> things from time to time.
>
>
> Best
> Helle Lohmann
>
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