I'm a scientist. If I couldn't use acronyms, a decent chunk of my work would take a whole lot longer to articulate. @Troodon80 would probably hate the way we use the word MAP (pronounced "map", meaning "maximum a posteriori"). There's just not much reason to spend the extra time spelling it out, much less saying the whole phrase.
I prefer to just say To Hit Armour Class Zero. I generally dislike acronyms, and pronouncing an acronym is something I will never do.
Would just like to point out at this juncture that acronyms are only acronyms BECAUSE they can be pronounced as words. NATO, LASER, CIPA, VALIS... all can be nicely pronounced as words.
If you CANNOT (reasonably) pronounce it, it is technically an initialism. Examples would be FBI, CIA, USA, SSSR, BRB, WTF...
So I guess you could expand the question to whether THAC0 is in fact an acronym, or whether it is an initialism.
*in popular usage the border between acronym/inititalism has become blurry over the years. Acronym is now often used for both, but that is not technically correct.
Yes, @Lord_Tansheron, because words are immutable Platonic forms that were given to man by the gods. As such, they have "technically correct" meanings that are distinct from their popular usage.
Some acronyms are treated as words. However, I don't think pronunciations of USA (You-Sa?), ITV, or BBC will be forthcoming any time soon.
Acronyms which are treated as words (lower case versions; i.e. laser instead of LASER), that's a different thing; e.g. laser, maser, radar, scuba, etc. Specialised use of acronyms when being used in a workplace which is familiar with their usage is also fine in my book, but not when those acronyms are being used outside that workplace. Typically, they will cause confusion more than anything else. The time spent then clarifying when someone asks what the acronym means—it typically doesn't outweigh the time saved when using it with those people. If you use the term "taco" with people who are not D&D-minded, then the reply will probably end up being along the lines of "no thanks, not hungry."
"So just don't use acronyms with those people," easier said than done. When people get into the habit of using acronyms as words, it's a habit which is difficult to drop. I was in such a habit, and thus my dislike for them was born as I was then required to explain what they meant to my boss and co-workers. Again, and again, and again. I dropped them almost entirely. If I need to ask someone what a particular acronym means, then they're probably going to have a really bad day.
One could also argue that upon an acronym being accepted as a word, they cease to function as an acronym. Like words being absorbed from other languages into English. For example, Café—which, in English terms, means a place to sit down and get tea, coffee, other beverages, and even food. Whereas Café, or le café, is simply 'coffee' in French. In such cases, the word (or acronym) loses its original meaning and becomes a descriptor.
"Laser" being "a thing that emits a beam of light," rather than "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
But that's semantics, and it's also off-topic. :-)
I think the conclusion would be that it depends on the audience and context. In my line of work I would address the scanning electron microscope as a SEM which everyone will understand, but to my family I will not use the acronym.
There is also a distinction between abbreviations that can be pronounced as a word and those that cannot (BBC will always sound weird without a vowel but LOL is actually not strange at all and in dutch it actually is a word that literally means "fun")
Th-ah-k-oh. Like "taco" but with "th" at the beginning instead of just "t." I don't think I've ever pronounced it out loud in my entire life, just in my head when reading it.
Too hit ay see zeeroh. Because it's "to hit AC zero," and also because it's longer that way. Acronyms are for slackers, IMO.
If you shorten it to thack-oh, you are lazy and bad, and everyone will be mad and frown at you when you say it. You could even get arrested.
Of course, the po-po won't SAY you're being arrested for your pronunciation, because that would sound silly. They'll come up with trumped-up charges like drunk driving or treason or public indecency. I mean, the treason thing isn't even tangentially related to the drive-by flashing in school zones. And the gummint wasn't even using those launch codes.
Just be a good person and say it right, like us normals.
I'm a scientist. If I couldn't use acronyms, a decent chunk of my work would take a whole lot longer to articulate. @Troodon80 would probably hate the way we use the word MAP (pronounced "map", meaning "maximum a posteriori"). There's just not much reason to spend the extra time spelling it out, much less saying the whole phrase.
And what about MAP gas? Also, as a welder, I have to admit most people don't pronounce most acronyms as words, but there are exceptions, especially less formal/older now discontinued terms, IE MIG, MAG, and TIG are all pronounced as words, but GMAW, SMAW, and GTAW are proncounced as letters, which is sad, because 'smaw' sounds awesome, though the others are hard to pronounce.
So, probably people chose to either pronounce an acronym as a word or letters depending on how hard to articulate the acronym would be. Thack-o is an easy pronunciation, with the caveat that its not a term that comes up very much in spoken word, so like most works of fantasy, pronunciation is not a big issue (we've all read Fantasy material in which the author clearly never read things out loud, or never had anyone ELSE read their work out loud, because it sounds really ridiculous).
It's also no secret that popular usage WILL trump dictionary precision eventually, like it or not. This is how languages evolve, and we're not going to change linguistics just because we have dictionaries.
I guess I feel like there are two points to be made here. First, you're not generally going to discuss THAC0 with people who don't know what it is, unless you intend to teach them what it is. That seems extremely analogous to the acronyms-used-in-the-workplace scenario. I use THAC0 in my gaming group (sometimes; we don't play editions that use it anymore), and on these forums, and that's really about it. There's not much danger of it entering my common speech and confusing people, and importantly, the unabbreviated form would confuse them non-gamers just as much.
Second, dictionaries do not determine the meanings of words, they merely catalog them. This is why dictionaries are constantly being updated as usage changes. Which doesn't mean quoting from the dictionary is useless, but I'm pretty skeptical when someone quotes a dictionary as saying that common usage is wrong.
@scriver: Okay. Maybe you weren't being serious. But that pictographic symbol you mentioned makes no sense.
I asked four friends what ":v" means and none of them knew. I also looked through a long Wikipedia list of emoticons and ":v" wasn't there anywhere. So I don't think you should be surprised we didn't know what it meant.
Comments
If you CANNOT (reasonably) pronounce it, it is technically an initialism. Examples would be FBI, CIA, USA, SSSR, BRB, WTF...
So I guess you could expand the question to whether THAC0 is in fact an acronym, or whether it is an initialism.
*in popular usage the border between acronym/inititalism has become blurry over the years. Acronym is now often used for both, but that is not technically correct.
Acronyms which are treated as words (lower case versions; i.e. laser instead of LASER), that's a different thing; e.g. laser, maser, radar, scuba, etc. Specialised use of acronyms when being used in a workplace which is familiar with their usage is also fine in my book, but not when those acronyms are being used outside that workplace. Typically, they will cause confusion more than anything else. The time spent then clarifying when someone asks what the acronym means—it typically doesn't outweigh the time saved when using it with those people. If you use the term "taco" with people who are not D&D-minded, then the reply will probably end up being along the lines of "no thanks, not hungry."
"So just don't use acronyms with those people," easier said than done. When people get into the habit of using acronyms as words, it's a habit which is difficult to drop. I was in such a habit, and thus my dislike for them was born as I was then required to explain what they meant to my boss and co-workers. Again, and again, and again. I dropped them almost entirely. If I need to ask someone what a particular acronym means, then they're probably going to have a really bad day.
One could also argue that upon an acronym being accepted as a word, they cease to function as an acronym. Like words being absorbed from other languages into English. For example, Café—which, in English terms, means a place to sit down and get tea, coffee, other beverages, and even food. Whereas Café, or le café, is simply 'coffee' in French. In such cases, the word (or acronym) loses its original meaning and becomes a descriptor.
"Laser" being "a thing that emits a beam of light," rather than "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
But that's semantics, and it's also off-topic. :-)
There is also a distinction between abbreviations that can be pronounced as a word and those that cannot (BBC will always sound weird without a vowel but LOL is actually not strange at all and in dutch it actually is a word that literally means "fun")
If you shorten it to thack-oh, you are lazy and bad, and everyone will be mad and frown at you when you say it. You could even get arrested.
Of course, the po-po won't SAY you're being arrested for your pronunciation, because that would sound silly. They'll come up with trumped-up charges like drunk driving or treason or public indecency. I mean, the treason thing isn't even tangentially related to the drive-by flashing in school zones. And the gummint wasn't even using those launch codes.
Just be a good person and say it right, like us normals.
So, probably people chose to either pronounce an acronym as a word or letters depending on how hard to articulate the acronym would be. Thack-o is an easy pronunciation, with the caveat that its not a term that comes up very much in spoken word, so like most works of fantasy, pronunciation is not a big issue (we've all read Fantasy material in which the author clearly never read things out loud, or never had anyone ELSE read their work out loud, because it sounds really ridiculous).
It's also no secret that popular usage WILL trump dictionary precision eventually, like it or not. This is how languages evolve, and we're not going to change linguistics just because we have dictionaries.
Second, dictionaries do not determine the meanings of words, they merely catalog them. This is why dictionaries are constantly being updated as usage changes. Which doesn't mean quoting from the dictionary is useless, but I'm pretty skeptical when someone quotes a dictionary as saying that common usage is wrong.
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Please take a long good look at this statement :v
I asked four friends what ":v" means and none of them knew. I also looked through a long Wikipedia list of emoticons and ":v" wasn't there anywhere. So I don't think you should be surprised we didn't know what it meant.
EDIT: What does it mean?
Does anybody know what ":v" means? Or is scriver the only one?
RARRRR!!!!
THACK-oh