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

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:04:04 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<conlang@...> wrote:
> I'm suddenly reminded of a question I have:
> How does _National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeitespartei_ (pardon the
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). So, pretty close.

> spelling!) reduce into _Nazi_? Is it just a phonetic spelling of the
> first four letters of 'National'?
This is what I consider most likely.

> Is/was this a common way of abbreviating stuff in German?
I'd say no. Not as common as, say, the Australian version of this
acrophony ("arvo", etc.) Abbreviations tend to be, as in English, from
the initial letters of components, hence NSDAP in this case.

(Sometimes such abbreviations become lexical items/words, as where PKW
and LKW are written as Pkw and Lkw to show that they're treated as
words, though still pronounced "pee ka wee" and "ell ka wee",
respectively. They mean "car" and "lorry"/"truck", respectively.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!

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