WHTELG?

Where Has The English Language Gone? I think the English language is being acronymed out of comprehension. Acronyms are running rampant on the lips of young and old alike during the beginning of the third millennium. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of young who can tell the meanings of acronyms that became prevalent when the older populace was younger.

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter of words or from word parts. The term initialism was first used in printed material in 1899 and originally described as abbreviations formed from initials, without reference to pronunciation. The word acronym was first printed in 1943. Alphabetism is a term for abbreviations pronounced as the names of letters. But, has the practice of shortening words and terms become out of control?

Businesses and the military are full of initialism. What is this sentence really saying?

“Neither the FBI nor CIA had any intel about the ICBM confrontation reported by ABC, CBS, and NBC.”

Without the shortened options, we’d write:

“Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation nor Central Intelligence Agency had any intelligence about the intercontinental ballistic missile confrontation reported by American Broadcasting Channel, Columbia Broadcasting System and National Broadcasting Company.”

We don’t even know the origins or some of the acronyms that make words. Who knew the word golf is derived from "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden"? And the term laser comes from the research results of "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation".

There are so many shortened words and phrases that it’s difficult to keep up. In addition to learning the meanings of some acronyms, we now must know the subject or field of reference to apply that definition. For example, IBM might be the acronym for the electronics company, International Business Machines, or reference an intercontinental ballistics missile (which is also abbreviated ICBM).

And we not only have America On Line, AOL, but that acronym is further reduced from AOL Instant Message to AIM. Misunderstanding is so common that the acronym or initials need to be redefined by adding one of the words back in, like RAM (random access memory) memory.

Many young adults can’t tell you what MPG, MSRP, and TTL mean when purchasing a vehicle. With new Internet terminology, most are totally clueless. HTML (hyper text mark up), URL (uniform resource locator), CSS (cascading style sheet), and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) are equivalent to foreign words.

Text messaging is totally obliterating the spelling, punctuation, and grammar talents required for a scholastic background. Even in the good old USA (United States of America)!

Heaven help us with homophones!

Classmate Friendships

When we attended high school, it was customary for students to sit alphabetically at the same desks everyday. I was wondering recently if there is any relationship between where we sat in school, who our long term friends turned out to be, and how those around us affected our life.

For example, being a “B” last name, my row of desks generally had maybe the “A-J” names, depending on which students were in that particular class. The next row beside mine might have been between “J” and “O”, so I was exposed to about the first half of the alphabet on a daily basis and not necessarily to those at the end.

In addition, being at the beginning of the alphabet, I only had neighbors on one side of my row of desks, while those in the middle had two sides. What chance did a shy person have in developing friendships with exposure to half the classmates that most had proximity to?

This thought may only apply to students who did not grow up in one area, and were around each other for more than four years. There is also an exception for friendships created with neighbors, new or old, or with those whose parents were friends.

So my questions are:

1. Do you think whom you sat near affected you?

2. Did one person near you make a noticeable impact on your life?

3. Do you feel being allowed to sit with your friends would have been better?

4. Did someone near you influence your behavior?

5. Did sitting alphabetically improve your social skills?

What Might Have Been

Growing up, I was never steered away from a particular occupation because I am female or because I am short or because I have blue eyes. I was always told I could be whoever and whatever I wanted to be. No one ever said I was incapable of doing something, so naive as I was, I attempted and succeeded in many things. Even then, there were activities I never had the opportunity to try. Have you ever thought about what you might have been or done if circumstances in your life had been different?

I was watching an old western where the Indians were chasing the pony soldiers, and I wondered why the flag carrying horsemen never got shot down. And if they did, would another rider stop to pick up the flag while being chased?

Right then, I decided if I were younger and had a horse, I’d have learned how to ride bareback and slide down one side at a full gallop, so I could scoop something off the ground. An ambitious thought. This in itself presented two problems. I’m short and I prefer riding tall horses, an equalizer of sorts. So my arm span from a tall horse wouldn’t reach the ground. That thought slid into... I’d have to learn to ride the horse’s underbelly, which would tickle, and the horse would just stop and laugh! Maybe that's why I never went that route.

Another thought was that I’d have been a gymnast. At the time, gymnastics wasn’t readily available to children, especially if the family had little money. But I think it would have been so much fun.

It would have been nice to have a long-term dance partner. Dancing is a great exercise and I can't believe how many guys don't realize how sensual it is. I never was lucky enough to find someone else who liked to dance.

Starting college, I thought I might become an architect because it was fun drawing floor plans for my "Dream House" which wasn't always just one house. My design changed depending upon the day I was drawing it or depending upon who I envisioned living in it with me. It wasn't until drafting class that I discovered I could do the mechanical parts of a design, but I'm not artistic enough to get the perspective view from my brain to my hand. It's so sad. At least I was raised with enough encouragement to give it a try.

Perhaps with more television viewing, I'll be reminded of other things that might have been.