Acronyms

[Hope Hurlbut]

Dear Dimitris,
In spoken languages we seem to use abbreviations more than acronyms. For example, I shorten English to Eng. when I write and Greek to Gr.  I worked on a spoken language for many years, and the name the people chose for the language was so long that my colleagues refused to say it, so I shortened that to L-K K (representing 3 long words), then everyone was happy.  For the language speakers themselves, usually they say Kadazan (abbreviated from the last K in the acronym).  (Actually there are many Kadazan languages, but it is always clear which language is being referred to by the context.)

Hope
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dimitris Mavreas 
  To: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 4:21 PM
  Subject: [SLLING-L] RE: Acronyms


  I find very interesting the whole discussion. I must agree that although the use of these acronyms is sometimes defined by political reasons (English hegemony, decisions by linguists or sign language users etc.), it is also a matter of practical needs. Greek alphabet despite similarities is different from Roman or Cyrillic. It happens that Language in Greek is Γλώσσα (I hope you can read the characters) so we must obligatory  use the letter Γ in the acronym for the Greek Sing Language. The acronym in Greek is ΕΝΓ and it is also used by Greek Deaf people ugh man. Of course when I participated to an international conference, I used GSL acronym. I use instead ΕΝΓ acronym when I write in Greek. I also use ΑΝΓ in order to refer to ASL because I want a more transparent term for my Greek readers (and because it is also hard to switch the language on my PC keyboard all the time!)  Linguists can always go to the abbreviation list in order to find what GSL, NTS and so on really mean. Abbreviations are used to make our lives easier. At the same time it is interesting to consider why we don't have acronyms for spoken languages.

   

  Dimitris Mavreas         

  Athens Greece



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