Wednesday 19 June 2019

abkürzungsfimmel

The German speakers have penchant to create vocalised acronyms rather than the tendency in English to use initialism (apronym) and turn those into something pronounceable—like scuba, radar, NATO or the USA PATRIOT Act —as in GroKo (Große Koalition, Grand Coalition) or Abi for Abitur, school graduation or more familiarly Flak for Fliegerabwehrkannone, anti-aircraft guns and Gestapo for die Geheime Staatspolizei.
Once the practise becomes too pervasive and trivialising and needs to be dialled back a bit, one might call another out for carrying on with the title term, the strange mania, habit of shortening words, itself abbreviated Aküfi. One mostly encounters Abkürzungsfimmel in technical or industry jargon—as in AküFiBw (Abkürzungsfimmel Bundeswehr, soldier talk).