Divine Plagiarism

There are some great differences between spoken language and written language. We speak with phonemes, almost all of which can be broken into consonants and vowels. Yet not ever language writes out their vowels, and some write out more vowels than are pronounced. Arabic is one of the former, where most soft vowels are implied and hard vowels are written.

One of my friends took a very intense Arabic immersion course. The first few weeks of the course dealt with script and sounds. Arabic, as a Semitic language, can included diacritics, or marks attached to consonants to indicate the associated soft vowels. These are rarely written outside of school and holy texts, but they are often a good learning aid for beginning speakers. A week or so into class, my friend's teacher took away the diacritics, and asked the students to sound out words. Surprisingly, the students were able to sound most of them out correctly. When the teacher asked the class how they could sound them out, they answered that 'it just sounded right.'

English generally spells out most of its vowels, and sometimes spells out a few that don't even make sounds, so it is a bit strange to a native English speaker to learn to read without vowels. Or is it? The modern dialect of Acronymese very readily makes words without using soft vowels. This dialect is spoken extensively in the military. Consider PNVS (pin-vis,) Pilot's Night Vision System. Two short 'I's, both implied. Or CIWS (see-whiz,) Close In-Weapons System. HATR (hatter,) Hazardous Air Traffic Report; WSO (Wizzo,) Weapons System Officer; DFAC (Dee-Fac,) Dining Facility.

Two interesting points come out of this similarity. First, the nature of acronyms in word creation. Interestingly, at some point the acronym supersedes its composing words encapsulating the meaning of the concept that it represents. Some acronyms are even designed with this in mind, like RED HORSE, (and of course some are designed completely oblivious to this fact, like CAC cards.) At that point, the composing words become something more along the lines of an etymology…an evolution of the word that can explain and amplify its meaning, but the acronym no longer points to the words, but the acronym takes on a life of its own. The life cycle of word generation and extinction is much faster, but so is the technical subject matter. ENIAC is as outmoded as a cooper, and both have long since exited common usage. This checks, as language, culture and economics are all intertwined. People use words to dialectically describe their world, and as their world changes so must their words.

The second implication is that there are natural pronunciation 'energy states,' certain things that are easier or harder to say. For some reason 's' is converted to 'sh,' 'w' becomes 'wh,' 's' becomes 'z.' 'rh' becomes 'r,' and others. The acronym is generally not made for pronunciation, so when pronounced, it becomes something easier to say. If I had more time, effort or interest, I would try to determine if this has something to do with soft vowels vs. hard vowels. Past a certain point, the word breaks apart into individual letters (DME, Dee-em-ee, Distance Measuring Equipment.) This may have some similarities with chemical formation and energy states. And if I had more effort or concern, I would see if there were differences between languages (as throat muscles develop differently based on what phonemes are used during childhood.) Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, I'm fresh out of effort and concern on this topic. Out.