BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => BM General Discussion => Topic started by: Velax on November 22, 2012, 05:43:47 PM
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I've been wondering, did they use acronyms in medieval times? I see people using acronyms for army names, or IC referring to "SA" on Dwilight, and it doesn't strike me as at all medieval. But I have no specific knowledge to back up that feeling.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR
It's old.
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Please do separate acronyms—which, properly, are abbreviations you can pronounce, like AIDS, JAG, or RAF—from simple abbreviations.
The former date back pretty much all the way. The latter, so far as I know, are a relatively recent thing.
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Please do separate acronyms—which, properly, are abbreviations you can pronounce, like AIDS, JAG, or RAF—from simple abbreviations.
The former date back pretty much all the way. The latter, so far as I know, are a relatively recent thing.
How do you pronounce SPQR?
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How do you pronounce SPQR?
Blargh. Please reverse "former" and "latter" in my previous message.
Apparently stuffing myself with Thanksgiving food wraps my brain in fluff.
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Blargh. Please reverse "former" and "latter" in my previous message.
Apparently stuffing myself with Thanksgiving food wraps my brain in fluff.
I hope you had, and continue to have a happy thanksgiving. To clarify, SA and 'moot are ok, but something like RAF is something modern and thus not ok for Dwilight?
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I hope you had, and continue to have a happy thanksgiving. To clarify, SA and 'moot are ok, but something like RAF is something modern and thus not ok for Dwilight?
Basically, don't look specifically for abbreviations you can pronounce. "Backronyms" like the "USA PATRIOT Act," where you decide on what it should be pronounced as and then work out what each letter stands for, are the worst.
There's not really a problem with "R. A. F." as an abbreviation for "Royal Air Force" (aside from the fact than an air force wouldn't exist ;D ); you just shouldn't have people pronouncing it as "Raf".
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In other words, pronouncing it "ess ay" is fine, but calling it "sah" is not.
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How about PCMUS?
Prevention of Cruelty to Monsters and the Undead Society.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR
It's old.
Can you find another example?
Roman Empire isn't really BM's setting. And it's the sole pre-modern case that I was aware of in general, too.
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This won't solve anything, but I found it interesting...
the world's longest acronym, according to the Guinness Book of World Records is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT (Нииомтплабопармбетжелбетрабсбомонимонконотдтехстромонт). The 56-letter acronym (54 in Cyrillic) is from the Concise Dictionary of Soviet Terminology and means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
The card-game Magic The Gathering has a playing card called Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental, with text on it saying: "Just call it OMRSTPLRLCNSWMTCTHTALCNEE for short."
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Can you find another example?
Roman Empire isn't really BM's setting. And it's the sole pre-modern case that I was aware of in general, too.
Writing in medieval times used lots of abbreviations, partly because much of what you need to write in things like books of prayers and church rolls are formulaic, but also because ink and parchment or vellum were extremely expensive.
You can find here a list of common medieval abbreviations, around half of which are not really abbreviations but acronyms:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01022a.htm
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Mmmm... Medieval Acronyms?... Yes, Abbreviations and Acronyms were used for almost all kind of things.
I have a medieval crux with these inscriptions:
__C__
__S__
NDSMD
__M__
__L__
And with SMQLIVB - VRSNSMV all around.
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Mmmm... Medieval Acronyms?... Yes, Abbreviations and Acronyms were used for almost all kind of things.
I have a medieval crux with these inscriptions:
__C__
__S__
NDSMD
__M__
__L__
And with SMQLIVB - VRSNSMV all around.
Yes, but nobody would try to pronounce those as words. Which makes them period-appropriate abbreviations, not much-more-modern acronyms.
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Yes, but nobody would try to pronounce those as words. Which makes them period-appropriate abbreviations, not much-more-modern acronyms.
*points to the link from vongenf up above* seems you ignored that extensive list.
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*points to the link from vongenf up above* seems you ignored that extensive list.
Those are not, by and large, the same kind of abbreviations.
Acronyms aren't just shortened words that you can still pronounce (like "Fel Rec" for "Felicis Recordationis"), they're a set of initials that, when put together, are pronounced as if they were a word. Like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, aka SARS. (Pronounced like "Stars" without the "t".) Or, as I mentioned before, the " Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act", which becomes the "USA PATRIOT Act", most commonly referred to simply as the Patriot Act.
These simply cannot be compared to the items on the list von Genf posted. From my skimming of it, those were pretty much exclusively written abbreviations—one whole section was abbreviations found on gravestones (or, well, catacomb inscriptions, but close enough), for Cthulhu's sake; those aren't shortened for ease of referring to something, they're shortened because the stonecarver just doesn't have that much space to work with!
And though there are a very few sets of initials in the list that could be read as acronyms if one chose (such as "SID" for "Spiritus In Deo", or "DOM" for "Deo Optimo Maximo"), I doubt very strongly that they ever were spoken aloud in such a manner as a matter of course.
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well... i did post "AD"'s wiki link, then saw his link and deleted the post
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Yes, but nobody would try to pronounce those as words. Which makes them period-appropriate abbreviations, not much-more-modern acronyms.
I have never seen such a narrow definition of acronym; but generally, you are right.
If i wanted to be picky, however, I would quote this, also from wikipedia:
"The early Christians in Rome, most of whom were Greek rather than Latin speakers, used the image of a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthys), which was said to stand for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ (Iesous CHristos THeou (h) Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior."
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This is tough because our characters are nominally all writing to each other, but they are doing so as if they had unlimited internet paper.
The 'tons of abbreviations' from the Catholic Encyclopedia existed because written real estate was expensive and so were good writers, particularly for manuscripts (which is what that is for - re-scripting texts). This is not really comparable to '!@#$ I have to say to the Duke of Norfolk.'
Additionally, many characters write conversationally. Even characters prone to writing 'proper' letters (which I encourage) inevitably have to send a one- or two-line letter about moving out at sunset or this or that game mechanic that doesn't lend itself to paragraphs of blather.
I don't think you would ever see a medieval noble put to paper a phrase like "'scuse me'" or a spoken shorthand, because if they wrote a letter, even to friends and family, it was formal. In conversation, particularly more rural or backwater nobles might use verbal colloquialisms, but even that might get looked down on at court. How any of this translates to BM is pretty tough to say and obviously impossible to enforce.
My preference is to begin all letters with formal address and end them with some kind of formal closure, e.g. 'I remain your obedient servant' or something to that effect. Even if they're not necessary (which is most of the time in BM) having the formal wrapping forces me to treat what I'm sending as a letter and less as a 'message.' Remember that our characters are sealing every single letter they write and putting your family seal on a letter is going to make you a little more conscious of what you've written in it.
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Remember that our characters are sealing every single letter they write and putting your family seal on a letter is going to make you a little more conscious of what you've written in it.
Hm. I like this. If we ever get family crests working, I would like the "send" button replaced with a picture of your family crest to reinforce it.
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What I get from my palaeography classes, which is basically transcribing of old texts to something that the average person can read, is that there is plenty of abbreviations used by medieval writers. That and they still had to invent a more unified way of writing.