The love to abbreviations (... and acronyms)
English speaking people use acronyms for everything:
for chatting: BTW, AFAIK, ASAP, ROLF;
for working: RSA, NQ, ISO, SAR, AMT;
People even make acronyms from their names: JFK;
All these acronyms turn my life crazy. The happy life of a non-native English speaker crashes at the acronyms wall. I am caused not only to study the English but also the huge amount of acronyms. As far as acronyms don't resemble words in the sense of etymology, learning acronyms becomes as boring as learning Chinese hieroglyphs. I would humble myself with this if there were a huge amount of Russian acronyms used everywhere and everyday, but there are NO. I can recall only few really Russian acronyms which are not the translation of the English ones. There is NO such a love to acronyms in Russia. So the question is: where the love to acronyms comes from in the English speaking countries?
Re: The love to abbreviations (... and acronyms)
Quote:
Originally Posted by it-ogo
Definition: Acronym is an abbreviation, which is pronounced as one word (not spelled).
According to this USA and USSR are not acronyms while LASER and SONAR are.
That's right, "abbreviation" is the thing we were really talked about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by it-ogo
IMHO they really make life easier.
The question is not stated as to use or not to use the abbreviations. If we focus on the Internet chatting: The question is why these abbreviations emerge in English as water drops while it rains and do not emerge in Russian (there are only few which are not the translations from English, while Russians really use Internet for chatting in Russian). By the way, what about other languages: French, German, ... .
Re: The love to abbreviations (... and acronyms)
Net abbreviations had appeared first in English even before the Internet became what it is now, i.e. before WWW (world-wide-web).
20 years ago people were using dialup modems (btw, modem is an acronym too from modulator-demodulator) and bulletin board systems (BBS), obviously, abbreviations were the result of people laziness (to a degree). First BBSs appeared in the US so it's only natural that these abbreviations were in English. When these systems appeared in Russia we used all these BTW, FYI, RTFM, AFAIK, IMHO, ASAP, etc just because they were de-facto standard and there was no reason to invent our own ones since everyone else seemed to understand them.
Re: The love to abbreviations (... and acronyms)
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoffeeCup
The question is not stated as to use or not to use the abbreviations. If we focus on the Internet chatting: The question is why these abbreviations emerge in English as water drops while it rains and do not emerge in Russian (there are only few which are not the translations from English, while Russians really use Internet for chatting in Russian). By the way, what about other languages: French, German, ... .
I really don't feel like that.
If we focus on the Internet chatting: first it spread in USA so corresponding culture naturally appeared in Endlish first and many things was borrowed into Russian.
Out of internet. Let us continue remembering abbreviations which are really used in Russian (in different situations, mixed list, not proper names):
Б/у = second hand
х/б = cotton-made
н/з = emergency store
ЗК = prisoner
и т.д. = etc.
и т.п. = etc. (2)
т.к. = because
т.е. = i.e.. that is
в т.ч. = including
т. зр. = viewpoint
и.о. = in charge
вуз = higher education establishment
зав = chief (in many senses)
зам = second in something
комбат = battalion commander
замполит = ... ???
главбух = chief accountant ?
управдом = ???
ЖЭК, БМП, БТР, РПГ, ДДТ, НИИ, п/пк, вохра, бомж, бич, чмо, нардеп, (АО, ОАО, ЗАО, ООО)...
...got boring.
Итого, I don't feel like there is less abbreviations in Russian than in English - in any sphere. In contrary I feel like abbreviations are more popular in Russian than in English because Russian usually is less compact and abbreviations are needed more (see my examples).
Re: The love to abbreviations (... and acronyms)
Quote:
Originally Posted by it-ogo
замполит = ... ???
главбух = chief accountant ?
управдом = ???
замполит = deputy commander for political work
главбух = chief accountant (yes)
управдом = property manager