The first citation of "acronym" in the OED is only 1940, yet Talmudic Hebrew uses them at least as far back as the Middle Ages. This makes me wonder when they are first found in other modern languages.
Anyone?
The first citation of "acronym" in the OED is only 1940, yet Talmudic
Hebrew uses them at least as far back as the Middle Ages. This makes me wonder when they are first found in other modern languages.
On Friday, March 10, 2017 at 6:49:02 AM UTC-8, Evertjan. wrote:
retrosorter <
5
In the OED, dated 1895:
SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States),
POTUS (President of the United States),
so what about 1940, Alternate Facts???
--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
POTUS -- I can't find a 19C use in Google books.
... It was not the shekar, or "strong drink" (potus inebrians), to which wine-drinking in its later stages always leads. These are only referred
to for ...
POTUS (n.) wire service acronym for president of the United States (or President of the United States), occasionally used outside wire
transmissions by those seeking to establish journalistic credibility, a survival from the Phillips Code, created 1879 by U.S. journalist Walter
P. Phillips to speed up transmission by Morse code, but obsolete from c.
1940 with the widespread use of teletype machines. Other survivals
include SCOTUS for "Supreme Court of the United States."
retrosorter <
5
In the OED, dated 1895:
SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States),
POTUS (President of the United States),
so what about 1940, Alternate Facts???
--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
retrosorter <hrichler@gmail.com> wrote on 10 Mar 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
The first citation of "acronym" in the OED is only 1940, yet Talmudic
Hebrew uses them at least as far back as the Middle Ages. This makes me
wonder when they are first found in other modern languages.
1
This is a NG about *translation*, not one about any subject about different languages, so strictly speaking you are OT [Off Topic].
2
Talmudic Hebrew is and was not a 'living' language as it was not spoken as a vernacular in Talmudic times.
3
Latin and Greek are not 'dead' languages as their modern counterparts are still spoken, be it that the Latin ones have different names.
4
Acronyms were common in Latin of the classic period, examples here: <https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronymum> and in the Greek of that time,
and in mideaval Hebrew ["Rashei Teivos"] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_abbreviations>
5
In the OED, dated 1895:
SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States),
POTUS (President of the United States),
so what about 1940, Alternate Facts???
retrosorter <hrichler@gmail.com> wrote on 10 Mar 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
The first citation of "acronym" in the OED is only 1940, yet Talmudic
Hebrew uses them at least as far back as the Middle Ages. This makes me
wonder when they are first found in other modern languages.
1
This is a NG about *translation*, not one about any subject about different languages, so strictly speaking you are OT [Off Topic].
2
Talmudic Hebrew is and was not a 'living' language as it was not spoken as a vernacular in Talmudic times.
3
Latin and Greek are not 'dead' languages as their modern counterparts are still spoken, be it that the Latin ones have different names.
4
Acronyms were common in Latin of the classic period, examples here: <https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronymum> and in the Greek of that time,
and in mideaval Hebrew ["Rashei Teivos"] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_abbreviations>
5
In the OED, dated 1895:
SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States),
POTUS (President of the United States),
so what about 1940, Alternate Facts???
Latin and Greek are not 'dead' languages as their modern counterparts are
still spoken, be it that the Latin ones have different names.
Latin only marginally survives as the Neo-Latin of the Catholic Church
and even that is dropping out of usage. Speakers of the descendants of
Latin, the Romance languages, don't think of themselves as speaking
Latin, and no one Romance language is considered the true heir.
Language survival is mostly about social atitudes. That is why we say
Greek survives but Latin doesn't. Welcome to sociolinguistics.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 30 Mar 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Latin and Greek are not 'dead' languages as their modern counterparts are >>> still spoken, be it that the Latin ones have different names.
Latin only marginally survives as the Neo-Latin of the Catholic Church
and even that is dropping out of usage. Speakers of the descendants of
Latin, the Romance languages, don't think of themselves as speaking
Latin, and no one Romance language is considered the true heir.
Language survival is mostly about social atitudes. That is why we say
Greek survives but Latin doesn't. Welcome to sociolinguistics.
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
It's more than just definitions. It's social reality.
Code switching betweeen Demotic and Classical Greek is not so
unacceptable, as Katherovousa (an ill defined compromise) shows.
But
people don't code switch between Latin and say French. The boundaries
are well defined.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 30 Mar 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Latin and Greek are not 'dead' languages as their modern counterparts are >>> still spoken, be it that the Latin ones have different names.
Latin only marginally survives as the Neo-Latin of the Catholic Church
and even that is dropping out of usage. Speakers of the descendants of
Latin, the Romance languages, don't think of themselves as speaking
Latin, and no one Romance language is considered the true heir.
Language survival is mostly about social atitudes. That is why we say
Greek survives but Latin doesn't. Welcome to sociolinguistics.
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 31 Mar 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
It's more than just definitions. It's social reality.
There is only reality, there are no shades of that, even in a multiverse.
The truth is a valid declaration about this reality.
Definitions are not true or false,
they are just labels, only meant to be mutually accepted.
Code switching betweeen Demotic and Classical Greek is not so
unacceptable, as Katherovousa (an ill defined compromise) shows.
I doubt that.
Well, the Athens papers written in katharevousa ["conceived in the early
19th century as a compromise between Ancient Greek and the Demotic Greek of the time"] in the early 1960s were easily readable to me with my school- classic-and-Homeric-Greek. Demotika and its local dialects took much more effort.
However, Modern Greek being a [partly] artificial language, like Indonesian, modern Hebrew, etc., while Italian, Spanish, Rumanian are not [or much less so].
But
people don't code switch between Latin and say French. The boundaries
are well defined.
There are no bounderies here but the passing of time, there was no Latin speaking parents giving birth to an Italian speaking child.
It's more than just definitions. It's social reality.
There is only reality, there are no shades of that, even in a multiverse.
The truth is a valid declaration about this reality.
There is no "truth" here. There are perceptions. The natural unit is an idiolect. The rest is sociology.
"A language" is a social construct.
So it is about perceptions of reality.
Haven't you heard the adage "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy".
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
This is about social perceptions,
so how society defines it is relevant.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 02 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
It's more than just definitions. It's social reality.
There is only reality, there are no shades of that, even in a multiverse. >>>
The truth is a valid declaration about this reality.
There is no "truth" here. There are perceptions. The natural unit is an
idiolect. The rest is sociology.
You are just introducing labels.
Labels are not sociology.
"A language" is a social construct.
Not so, languages are not constructed,
only artificial ones [Esperanto, Modern Greek, Modern Hebrew, etc] are and then only partly, as they are build on older memes like the rest, and immediately start to evolve by usage.
Even computer-languages evolve, as sometimes the errors made in the definitions or the implementations/rendering machines are becoming so important the correction of the implementations is out of the question.
So it is about perceptions of reality.
If you say so, but I disagree, it is not.
Truth is not the perception of reality.
Natural languages are, in my definition, compound memes,
the result of natural selection in the interaction of brains trough their natural and artificial interfaces.
Haven't you heard the adage "A language is a dialect with an army and a
navy".
An addagium?
I would say it is a translation of a Yiddish quote:
"An shprach iez an dialekt mit ane armej un an flot."
said by Max Weinreich, the Latvian "sociolinguist" [sic ;-) ].
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 02 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Well, one can use definitions and then anything goes.
This is about social perceptions,
Why? That seems to be just your perception of this discussion.
so how society defines it is relevant.
Even if it did, why should it be? That seems to be just your perception.
Why? That seems to be just your perception of this discussion.
Labeling something a seperate language is done by society.
"A language" is a social construct.
Not so, languages are not constructed,
An entirely different issue.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 02 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Why? That seems to be just your perception of this discussion.
Labeling something a seperate language is done by society.
Not at all.
Labeling can be done by just temporarily defining it for the sake of an argument.
You would have to define "society" and "social",
as "asocial" is not from "asociety", for instance,
so your try to set a labeling as an accepted fact gets you nowhere.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 02 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
"A language" is a social construct.
Not so, languages are not constructed,
An entirely different issue.
So a construct is not something that is constructed?
Or do you mean "A language" is a label?
Why would you call a label a "social construct"?
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 02 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
"A language" is a social construct.
Not so, languages are not constructed,
An entirely different issue.
So a construct is not something that is constructed?
Or do you mean "A language" is a label?
Why would you call a label a "social construct"?
Example: During the era of Yugoslavia there was Serbo-Croatian. Now
there is Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montonegrin.
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 03 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Example: During the era of Yugoslavia there was Serbo-Croatian. Now
there is Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montonegrin.
They "were" not, they are just labels.
Do they "have" armies and navys?
And labels are just tamporal definitions in a discusssion.
By applying the word "social" you probally think labeldefinitions become
part of reality, which I would deplore.
btw, the same holds for "English" as a label.
--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
(Please change the x'es to dots in my emailaddress)
Whatever "post-modern" crap you are into I don't care.
The whole point is what you call "labels".
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 03 Apr 2017 in sci.lang.translation:
Whatever "post-modern" crap you are into I don't care.
So I should care what crap you are into?
The whole point is what you call "labels".
If you say so.
Evertjan. on 4/3/2017 in <XnsA74CE2B8D233Eeejj99@194.109.6.166> wrote :
Yusuf B Gursey <ygursey@gmail.com> wrote on 03 Apr 2017 in
sci.lang.translation:
Whatever "post-modern" crap you are into I don't care.
So I should care what crap you are into?
Why should I care about anything about you!!!
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