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    Acronyms

    Comment
    Abbreviations seem to be a key part of the German language, and many of the most popular are very difficult for us English speakers. (It took me years to get my brain around "bzw" for instance.) However, it seems to me that the British in particular, and to a lesser extent the Americans, rather like abbreviations to be acronyms, whereas acronyms are relatively infrequent in German.

    Is this a correct impression? Or are their loads of German acronyms out there which have escaped me? I have to confess that two which spring to mind are "Nazi" and "Gestapo"; this is, of course, unfortunate, but I wonder whether acronyms were popular seventy years or so ago, but have become less so because of connotations of that kind.

    For a bit more on English acronyms, see http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/asye.htm and http://www.swalk.com/swalk.htm
    AuthorJoe W06 Jun 06, 11:51
    Comment
    yesterday on the news the had a bit about a new Literaturmuseum for modern literature having opened in Marbach, next to the Schillermuseum. And guess what it's called - correct, LIMO. The newsreader had a hard time pronouncing it so it didn't sound like Limo, the short word for Limonade.
    Funny you should mention the Third Reich, there is a whole chapter on abbreviations in Victor Klemperer's book LTI (lingua tertii imperii), which deals with how language was manipulated during that time.
    #1Authortanja106 Jun 06, 11:56
    Comment
    I don't know if these are actually acronyms, but they are similar to Vopo etc:   related discussion:KaDeWe etc
    #2AuthorArchfarchnad -gb-06 Jun 06, 12:00
    Comment
    Just one example of many:
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Akronyme

    Try googling "Akronyme" and you should get many hits. There are also lists which give you the English translation
    #3Authorbienchen (de)06 Jun 06, 12:01
    Comment
    Just a word of caution to everyone that acronyms are different than abbreviations. Acronyms are words formed from the first letter of the phrase, e.g. SOP -> Standard Operating Procedure or HTH -> Hope This Helps. An abbreviations is generally just that: a shortened form of a word, e.g. Number -> No. or Model -> Mod., etc.

    In this regard, Nazi and Gestapo would be abbreviations, but they wouldn't be acronyms. Or would they be "German acronyms"?

    Don't really know about "true" (in the English mold) German acronyms. The ones that pop into my mind are DDR, BRD, USSdR, etc.

    My question is this: Is Kfz (Kraftfahrzeug) an acronym or an abbreviation? I have no idea.
    #4Authortrocco (AE)06 Jun 06, 12:32
    Comment
    @ trocco: I would still classify Gestapo as an acronym but Nazi as an abbreviation. Moreover, I would classify Kfz as a acronym, as it derives from KraftFahrZeug, not as an abbreviation.
    #5Authorbienchen (de)06 Jun 06, 12:40
    Comment
    I always thought that acronyms were a type of abbreviation in which the first letter(s) of the words in a phrase are taken to form a new word. So laser, NATO, AIDS or snafu would be acronyms, but HTH, EU or TUC wouldn't. In the Harry Potter series, Hermione forms a "society for the protection of elvish welfare" (or similar words to that effect with the same initials), SPEW in short. Her friends speak it as an acronym, Hermione doesn't. Other acronyms in Rowling's books include the exams (OWLs and NEWTs) taken by the young wizards; Dumbledore's Army, on the other hand, is abbreviated to "DA", which is not an acronym.
    Gestapo, to me, is an acronym because the first letters (capitalized by me) of "GEheime STAatsPOlizei" form a new word. "Kfz" is an abbreviation because it is not a new word, but spoken letter by letter. The same is true of DDR, BRD etc. "Nazi" is debatable.
    #6AuthorDragon06 Jun 06, 12:47
    Comment
    I have to revise my earlier posting. Dragon is right. I forgot about the "forming a new word"-thing. This makes KFZ an abbreviation, I guess. Still, I wouldn't count Nazi as an acronym, though I can't say why.
    #7Authorbienchen (de)06 Jun 06, 12:57
    Comment
    @Dragon: I think you're right (and I completely forgot) that it has to form a new word to become an acronym: SCUBA, laser, NATO, etc.

    This apparently is not to be confused with *initialism*, which is what HTH, etc. would be.

    I really don't know if the same applies to German (Kfz).
    #8Authortrocco (AE)06 Jun 06, 12:59
    Comment
    Ain't it amazing what happens when you ask a simple question and then go out for a long lunch?! Thanks everyone. That was fascinating, and I suspect there might be more to come.

    While I was out at lunch, I remembered one I've been quietly laughing about for decades. I was in Berlin in 1985 when the Technical University there was setting up their answer to the Cambridge Science Park, where I was working at the time. They had decided to call theirs the "TchnologieInnovationsPark", or "TIP" for short. No German I spoke to would believe that the English would find this funny.
    #9AuthorJoe W06 Jun 06, 14:18
    Comment
    After working in a German school for a year, I've come across many abbreviations.

    NW - Naturwissenschaften
    Bio
    WeNo - Werte und Normen
    FaKo - Fachkonferenz
    GeKo - Gesamtkonferenz
    Geselle - Gesellschaft

    There are probably more, but they're what I can think of at the moment.

    Although in English schools we have
    IT
    RE
    PE
    PSE

    #10AuthorRachel06 Jun 06, 14:41
    Comment
    @ Joe W

    Noch viel schlimmer: Das (staatliche) Deutsche Institut für Entwicklungspolitik mit Sitz in Berlin und einer Klientel, die häufig in englischsprechenden Entwicklungsländern lebt, hat sich als Abkürzung makabererweise DIE ausgesucht. Ich hoffe nicht, dass das als der deutsche Beutrag zur Lösung von Problemen in Entwicklungsländern missverstanden wird!

    Quelle: http://www.die-gdi.de/
    #11AuthorFrankli06 Jun 06, 15:01
    Comment
    I just finished a tranlation for a company that called the Eastern European branch of itself "B*** Eastern Europe," or BEE for short. That this might be odd in an English text did not strike a chord either. I was tempted to hum "Biene Maja".
    #12AuthorSelkie06 Jun 06, 16:22
    Comment
    So richtig 'kriminell' wird es aber dann wenn man 'acronyms' oder 'abbreviations' absolut falsch verwendet (sprich so verwendet, wie es sich "anhoert").
    Ich habe vor Jahren einen rassistischen Spruch an einer Hauswand gelesen:
    " *** ab ins Kazett"
    Sagt auch was ueber den geistigen Horizont des Verfassers aus, oder?
    #13AuthorJaWoNa07 Jun 06, 04:14
    Comment
    Acronyms and initialisms are subsets of abbreviations which are pronounceable, UNESCO, NATO, KaDeWe, GeStaPo (to highlight the initials) and so on.

    USA is an abbreviation or initialism, but not an acronym (unless you say ooh-sah) as are HTML, XML, IBM, BMW and so on. In these, you just say the letter names aitch tee em ell, and so on. These are not acronyms.

    Bzw, abbr., and so on are just plain ol' vanilla abbreviations.
    #14AuthorPeter <us>07 Jun 06, 04:43
    Comment
    Heard a new acronym yesterday at a parent-teacher meeting: ASAs = andere schriftliche Arbeiten. And my favorite two abbreviations: KüMo and BüNaBe.
    #15AuthorSelkie07 Jun 06, 08:35
    Comment
    Apropos Schule, wer kennt noch "Ogata"? (OGaTa?
    #16Authortanja107 Jun 06, 08:44
    Comment
    yes i would agree.
    as a professional technical translator i come across loads of abbreviations.
    but i guess a good tech dictionary/ even LEO is useful...
    or if ur lucky enough... just ask a german colleague

    :)
    #17Authorminu07 Jun 06, 08:54
     
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