acronyms and abbreviations

[cellio]

Dani and I had an interesting conversation about abbreviations and acronyms (pronouncable abbreviations) tonight, prompted by the assertion that the location of a web page is a "u-r-l", not an "url" (rhymes with a man's name). We both consider that obvious, but we both know people who think it's "url". A similar case applies to "s-c-a" (not "sca"), the historical organization we belong to.

So, I asked, what characterizes an acronym? I'm not sure; Dani's take is that an acronym has to "sound like a word" (in English, in our case). (But "url" does, so it's not just that -- but I didn't drill into that.) What does "sounds like a word" mean? I guess it's a comfortable sequence of phonemes, the sort of utterance that would make you say "I don't know what that word means" as opposed to "have you been drinking?". NASA, NARAL, and UNICEF are examples of this. We tried to think of three-letter acronyms; neither of us were sure whether NOW is usually "n-o-w" or "now". (I've heard both and neither makes me twitch.)

I opined that the longer an abbreviation is, the more incentive there is to pronounce it if you can No one wants to say "n-a-s-a" if "nasa" will do; the former is too many syllables. ("I-e-e-e" is cumbersome in a different way, hence "i-triple-e".) With a three-letter abbreviation the cost of spelling it out isn't so high, though Dani thinks there are fewer of them that are going to sound like words. "Ibm" would never be mistaken for a word in the English language; "doj" (sounds like "dodge") would be but we say "d-o-j". So I'm not sure what's going on with three-letter cases.

There was an amusing bit of dialogue:

Me: S-O-S.
Dani: Yeah, but that's interesting because it is a sequence of letters in Morse Code.
Me: That was the first of the two applications of that abbreviation I had in mind.
Dani: (pause) Ok, but you're one of only ten people who remembers Son Of Stopgap.
Me: There've got to be at least 50. :-)
Dani: Stopgap, on the other hand...

And yes, I pronounce it "s-o-s" either way; while "sos" doesn't sound unreasonable as a word, it feels completely wrong as a pronounced reference to an early text editor. (Which, by the way, I suspect is remembered by thousands of people.)

Addendum: Combined forms. "H-vac", not "h-v-a-c", but "b-a-t-f", not "bat-f".

Comments

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

I keep saying 'url'. Drives kr1mz0n_ghoti up the wall.

It makes sense to me *shrug* :)

but yeah, I say s-c-a and scadian, but not 'sca'.

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

Three letter acronym: WHO. World Health Organization. We NEVER called it the latter.

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

The first dictionary I checked online (M-W) shared my usage, but a subsequent search found definitions that didn't.

I think that the distinction between an acronym and an abbreviation formed from initial letters is lost.

The definition I linked calls both NATO and FBI acronyms, and I would, too. I think the pronounceability factor doesn't affect whether or not it's an acronym, in current usage (or rather, in my current usage, though I think it's shared).

As for pronouncing them, I think it's going to depend on the letters involved. The pronounced version likely needs to feel shorter than pronouncing individual letters, but it also has to have enough vowel sounds to sound like a word.

About your addendum...I don't see many of those up here...not sure why. But I think they mainly tend to work as initial letter + pronounced word. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is that our version of C-SPAN is the "Cable Public Affairs Channel," CPAC pronounced CEE-pak. Maybe there's something about the letter name being an accented syllable in the acronym. *shrug*

[goljerp]

I wonder if specialized 3-letter acronyms are more or less likely to be spelled out... but most that I thought of (PCR, MRI, NMR) were spelled. Anyhow, there were two that I thought of that don't fit the pattern:
SQL (I've heard it both S-Q-L and "Sequel") and JPEG (I think of it as "J-peg")

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Do you say "faq" or F-A-Q? It would seem inconsistent to me to say "faq" and "U-R-L" (or vice versa).

And for the record, I do say "sca" (you can take the kid out of the Midrealm, but...).

"Sca"

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

To me, that's a form of music (ska).

And if you find the answers to your questions, lemme know, because now it's bugging me too! ;-)

And "url" is just WRONG! *g*

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

FWIW Johan always said h-v-a-c, not h-vac.

Logically one would expect people to pronounce an abbreviation if it reduces the number of syllables or makes it easier to pronounce. I was not familiar with "i-triple-e" but it makes sense: though it's not fewer syllables, i-e-e-e is hard to say, involving either all those glottal stops that Americans hate or slurring the whole thing together into incomprehensibility. :-)

I find it amusing listening to radio and TV people try to get around w-w-w when listing web addresses. Nine syllables (ok, six if you're lazy and say "dub-ya") is a mouthful, so I'm surprised that no standard shortened form has developed (outside of people skipping it entirely and just saying "website.com.")

In the end, I guess it's probably a combination of what "catches on" and what sounds melodious to the speaker that determines how things are said.

[alice-curiouser.livejournal.com]

I say "url" and "faq", but if I have cause to talk about SCA, I would say S-C-A. I'm not sure why, except I know that Ska is music, and I don't know anyone named Earl. I wonder if people named Earl say "url"...?

[gregbo.livejournal.com]

Some people I knew at Digital's research labs pronounced the acronyms as single-syllable sounds. For example, Cambridge Research Lab was CRL (curl), Western Research Lab was WRL (wurl). As you might expect, URL was pronounced url.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Coming late to this conversation, but at least that gives me the advantage of being able to see the interesting continuation in the comments.


I hadn't previously come across this use of acronym: the distinction I'd make (and Chambers backs it up) is that an abbreviation is any kind of shortening (e.g. demo for demonstration), acronym is specifically abbreviation to the initial letters (or syllables, which was news to me). Your distinction - that an acronym has to be pronounceable - is useful, but is it currently correct?

And, for what it's worth, I think a lot of what you are talking about is usage. Yes, some examples would be really hard to reduce to words, and they get spelled ouy, and some are cumbersome as initials and more likely to be translated into "words". But that "Real DB professionals say Sequel" is meaningless unless most ordinary people say SQL, and so on...