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THE USE OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS IN ENGLISH
G‘aniyeva Barchinoy Bahrom qizi
Faculty of English Philology Teaching, Uzbekistan
State World Languages University, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Shamsiddinova Dilafruz
Supervisor:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14977751
Abstract:
Learning acronyms and abbreviations is extremely beneficial
when learning English since they are an element of colloquial English. People are
used by English speakers when they write essays, play games, send emails, and
occasionally participate in conversations. They usually work to save time.
Keywords:
abbreviation, acronyms, shortenings, meanings
Introduction
Definitions of acronyms and abbreviations
According to the Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language edited
by McArthur( 1998 1, 8), a condensation is the" shortening of words and
expressions" whereas an acronym" is an condensation from the first letters of a
series of words and pronounced as one.". According to his description, the two
are different in that the former is spoken as individual letters of the alphabet,
whilst the ultimate is pronounced as a single word, similar to WAR( Women
Against Force) and ATM( Automated Teller Machine), independently. The notion
of acronyms is further clarified by Yule( 1996 68), who writes
Acronyms are formed from the original letters of a set of words. These can
remain basically' alphabetisms' similar to CD(' compact fragment'), where the
pronunciation consists of a set of letters. Further, generally, acronyms are
pronounced as single words, as in NATO, NASA, or UNESCO.
Landau (1989: 27), on the other hand, attempts to make a clear distinction
between abbreviations and acronyms when he states:
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, consisting of the
word or the first letter of each of the words in the phrase, or sometimes the first
two letters.
An acronym is a form of abbreviation composed of the first or the first two
letters or a syllable from each of the words in a compound term or phrase, so
ordered that the resulting series of letters is usually pronounced as a word.
Landau( 1989 27) further notes that occasionally, the distinction between
bowdlerizations and acronyms is arbitrary, as speakers frequently gasp and
treat them as one, in that what one considers an acronym, others may choose to
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spell out the individual letters, therefore making it a condensation or
alphabetism as well. He cites the acronym Truant( absent without leave), which
some speakers gasp as a word, making it an acronym, while others gasp it as a
sequence of letters, in which case it's a condensation. In this paper, however, we
borrow Landau's( 1989) description of the two terms, condensation and
acronym. The terms alphabetisms or initialisms will not be used.
English Dictionaries
Altogether, ten named English wordbooks were surveyed, looking at
whether bowdlerizations and acronyms are included in these wordbooks and, if
so, how they're represented. The following table gives the results of the check:
Table 1: Abbreviations and acronyms in selected English dictionaries
Dictionary
Year of
Publication
Classification
Acronyms/
Abbreviations
The New American
Webster
Handy
College
Dictionary.
Morehead, Albert and
Loy
Morehead
(Eds.)
(NAWHCD)
1981
Monolingual
Yes,
a
list
of
abbreviations
and
acronyms is given
separately as a back
matter text
The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Current
English. Sykes, J.B.
(Ed.). (CODCE)
1982
Monolingual
Yes, listed as part of
the
lexicon/lemmatised in
the macrostructure
Collins
Concise
Dictionary
(4th Edition). (CCD)
1999
Monolingual
Yes, listed as part of
the
lexicon/lemmatised in
the macrostructure
Longman Dictionary
of
Contemporary
English. New Edition.
(LDCE
1987
Monolingual
Yes, as part of the
lexicon/lemmatised
in the macrostructure
Longman Dictionary
of English Language
and Culture. (LDELC)
1998
Monolingual
Yes, listed as part of
the
lexicon/lemmatised in
the macrostructure
Oxford
Advanced
Learner's
Dictionary of Current
English. Hornby, A.S.
(7
th
Edition).
Wehmeier,
Sally
(Chief ed.). (OALDCE)
2005
Monolingual
Yes, as part of the
lexicon/lemmatised
in the macrostructure
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Six of the ten English wordbooks list bowdlerizations and acronyms in the
macrostructure as part of the vocabulary, while one includes them in a list as a
background textbook. In seven of the below wordbooks, an intriguing
observation can be made regarding the phonological representation of these
bowdlerizations and
acronyms in the wordbook. In six of these wordbooks, the pronunciation of
the acronyms and bowdlerizations is given using IPA symbols( International
Phonetic Alphabet), and these abstracts are also marked for stress. Acronyms,
which are pronounced as the spelling suggests, are marked for primary stress
only, which is the strongest type, while bowdlerizations carry both primary
stress represented with a high mark() and secondary stress( less prominent)
represented with a low mark(), as illustrated below.
Abbreviations:
FBI abbrev. /efbi:a/ … for the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the police
department in the US which is controlled by the national government and which
deals with serious crimes that involve people or places in more than one of the
states in the US … (LDELC, p. 472)
PX /pi:eks/ …abbreviation for post exchange … (LDELC, p. 1089)
BA /bi:ei/ … abbreviation for Bachelor of Arts …. (CIDE, p. 88)
UAE /ju:ei:/ … abbreviation for United Arab Emirates (CIDE, p. 1577)
CBS /si:bi: es/ abbr (in the USA) Columbia Broadcasting System: a CBS
news
broadcast: to CBS (OALDCE, p. 235)
Acronyms:
UNICEF /ju:nsef/ n … abbreviation for United Nations International
Children's Fund (CIDE, p. 1589)
ACAS /eks/ abbr (in Britain) Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration
Service (an organization that helps with negotiation during industrial
disputes) (OALDCE, p. 7)
NASA /ns/ (in the USA) National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(OALDCE, p. 1013)
UNESCO /ju:nesk/ abbr United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (OALDCE, p. 1670)
OPEC /pek/ n [the] Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; a
group of countries that produce oil and plan together how to sell it … (OALDCE,
p. 1062)
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Bowdlerizations, on the one hand, are considered complex' words'; hence,
they're pronounced for both primary and secondary stress. It seems that
acronyms, on the other hand, are phonologically considered to be simple'
words' and carry alcohol or primary stress. Both aphoristic and disyllabic
acronyms carry primary stress on the first syllable, while polysyllabic bones can
carry stress either on the first or alternate syllable, as indicated over. Still, some
exceptions to the below treatment include The New American Webster Handy
College Dictionary( Albert and Loy Morehead 1981), the Oxford Dictionary and
Thesaurus( Waite 2007), and the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English(
Sykes 1982). The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary( 1981)
provides a separate list of bowdlerizations and acronyms at the end of the
wordbook as a back textbook, while the ultimate two indicate the pronunciation
of acronyms by way of orthographic rewriting, and none at all for
bowdlerizations.
Conclusion
From the dictionaries surveyed above, we conclude that all the English
dictionaries in the survey include abbreviations and acronyms in their lemma
list. They are considered part of the lexicon as they are lemmatised in
alphabetical order with all the other lemmas.
References:
1.
CCD = Collins Concise Dictionary. 1999. Fourth Edition. Glasgow:
HarperCollins
2.
Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 1998 = McArthur,
Tom (Ed.). 1998. Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford:
Oxford University Press
3.
CODCE = Sykes, J.B. (Ed.). 1982. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current
English. Oxford: Clarendon Press
4.
LDCE = Summers, D. (Ed.). 1987. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English. New Edition. Harlow: Longman
5.
LDELC = Summers, D. (Ed.). 1998. Longman Dictionary of English
Language and Culture. New Edition. Harlow: Longman
6.
Mojela, V. (Ed.). 2007. Pukuntšutlhaloši ya Sesotho sa Leboa.
Pietermaritzburg: Nutrend Publishers.
7.
NAWHCD = Morehead, Albert and Loy Morehead (Eds.). 1981. The New
American Webster Handy College Dictionary. New York: Penguin Group
8.
OALDCE = Hornby, A.S. 2005. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of
Current English. Seventh Edition. Chief Editor Sally Wehmeier. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
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9.
ODT = Waite, Maurice (Ed.). 2007. Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
10.
Landau, S.I. 1989. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11.
Yule, G. 1996. The Study of Language. Second Edition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
