Re: USAGE: German Abbreviations (Re: Introducing myself, and several questions)

Hi!

Tristan McLeay <conlang@...> writes:
> On 17 Feb 2005, at 8.43 pm, Damian Yerrick wrote:
>
> > Heck some would argue that if Dutch were a conlang, its word
> > |natie| for "nation" would offend anyone who remembers the
> > Holocaust because it's pronounced roughly ["na.t_si].
I found this coincidence quite funny when I learned Dutch. I was
puzzled about 'VN = Verenigde Naties' very much -- in German, it
sounds like 'united nazis', but it really means 'united nations'...
'De Verenigde Naties hebben besloten dat ...': very confusing to
hear this in the nieuws.

> I'm suddenly reminded of a question I have:
> How does _National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeitespartei_ (pardon the
> spelling!) reduce into _Nazi_?
Well, the pronunciation starts with /,na.ts)jo:'na:l/, so ['na:ts)i:]
isn't too different.  Further, words in -/i/ can be associated with
persons, so I suppose it simply worked like that.

> Is it just a phonetic spelling of the first four letters of
> 'National'?
I think so.

> Is/was this a common way of abbreviating stuff in German?
No, this is special.  There may be other examples, but it's not a
*common* way of abbreviating.

**Henrik