Re: NATLANG: Scary Document

John Cowan wrote:

> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > More on-topic, on of the more attractive features linguistically of the
good ol'
> > and thankfully dead Soviet Union was the prevalence of officialese
abbrevs made
> > of the first bits of the constituent words, eg _Sovnarkom_, _SmerSh_,
_GULag_.
>
> The U.S. Navy (but not the other parts of the U.S. armed forces) does this
> too:  the Office of Naval Operations is OpNav, e.g.  My favorite assistant
> was the functional title "Assistant Communicator", which became AssCom.
>
Dim memories of my days as an Army typist suggest that the Army was just as
clever.  And we have the current CentCom.

Indonesian loves these things.  Found at random in my dictionary:  DASWATI
"Daerah Swatantra Tingkat" 'autonomous region'....KODAM, KODAMAR "Komando
Daerah Militer, ....Maritim" 'Area Military Command, Naval District'...and a
whole slew beginning with Dep-:  Deparlu "Departemen Luar Negeri" 'Dept. of
Foreign Affairs' et sim.  There was the late unlamented TimTim "Timor Timur"
'East Timor' (or East East if you will).  Odd that some are written with
caps, others not.  I taught at an IKIP "Institut Perguruan dan Ilmu
Pengetahuan" 'Inst. of Pedagogy and Science' and UNHAS "Universitas
Hasanuddin" located in Sulselra "Sulawei Selatan dan Tengara" (province)
South and Southeast Sulawesi (since split up).

ObConlang:  Kash too, though there aren't yet many:
LaKaHo "Landin Kaçili Holundaka" 'Bank of the Holundan People'