What do the letters mean? 1. Methodology. Introduction

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Friends, do you know what an abbreviation is? Yes, of course you do. This is a small sentence abbreviated to the initial letters of each word in that sentence. State Security Committee (KGB), Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), Higher Educational Institution (HEI).

Do you know what an "acronym" is? Here many will scratch their heads and google. Take your time, I'll explain. An acronym is essentially the next stage in the development of an acronym. When the contraction is pronounced not according to the syllables "Ve-U-Ze", but together "VUZ", as if it were an ordinary word. Yes, we may never have pronounced "VUZ" by "syllables", but in fact this acronym continues to be an abbreviation.

At the next stage of its existence, the abbreviation may well become an ordinary word. So, for example, it happened with "VUZ". I am sure that many can immediately name a couple of more such abbreviations, which are technically still abbreviations, but at the same time have long been used as ordinary words, although in the old fashioned way sometimes they still continue to be written at least with a capital first letter. They can be inflected according to the cases, while they have completely usual endings for nouns, with their help you can form new words based on the original meanings. In addition to "university", you can name, for example, the words "laser", "VIP", "homeless", "PR". Many, probably, have already forgotten that the word "university" was once an abbreviation, which had to be spelled out in order to understand the full meaning. However, the general use of the abbreviation soon led to the fact that the word began to be written with a small letter, declined and used in everyday speech as first a generalizing concept, and then completely synonymous with the words "university" or "institute". Abbreviation has become a word that was not there before; in a word that has its own image. Maybe everyone has their own, but having certain general parameters, which are determined by three words of which this abbreviation consists.

Tell me what a "university" is and why it is called that. A university is an institution, roughly speaking, it is a place where people go for a specific purpose. It's true. However, this is not the whole truth about the university. A university is an educational institution. This is more accurate, now we know for what purpose they visit this institution. To learn, or at least pretend. However, this is not all. A university is a higher educational institution. Having revealed the meanings of all the letters of the abbreviation, we learned that the "university" is a place for passing the highest stage of education. Now everything is in place.

No matter how stupid it may sound now, but put this paragraph in your mind and in your understanding. We had three words: "Higher", "Educational", "Institution" - and now it has become one, which includes all three previous ones. This is the meaning of abbreviation, to make one of several words that can be used, meaning by it in communication several meanings combined in a single meaning. Use in conversation. Of course, taking into account the fact that each of the parties knows the meaning of this word or the words of its constituents.

Now imagine that every word that we use in communication is such an abbreviation, an abbreviation, consisting of a set of letters, each of which has a specific meaning. "Phenomenon", "boot", "space", "fan", "tree", "mug", "cement", "paper", "bed". Imagine these are all acronyms. Have you presented? Unlikely. At first, this assumption simply does not fit in the head. And that's okay. We are accustomed to a given coordinate system in our world and, using words as units of communication, we don’t think that they can also consist of something at the “atomic level”.

Yes, we all know that words are made up of roots, prefixes, suffixes, and endings. Also, a word can be divided into syllables and read by letter, but few people think that each letter itself can have some meaning, and for this very reason it is in the word in its proper place. It's complicated. In order for this to work, there must be some unified system in which each letter must have a strictly defined and unchanging meaning for the thousands of words in which it is used. Take the letter "T" for example. It will have to have the same meaning in the abbreviations "dough", "thermos", "chair", "shooter", "courage", "flattery" and even "little raccoon" in the Moscow zoo will have the meaning of the letter "T". But this is no longer just difficult, it is incredibly difficult.

Agree, among modern abbreviations, it is very difficult to find any system for using abbreviations. The same letter has completely different meanings in different situations. For example, in the word "university" the letter "B" means "Higher". In the word, "VAZ", the same "B" means "Volzhsky". In the word "VKS" - military. And some Vasya from Novosibirsk in general can create some kind of IP named after himself, and the letter "B" will be deciphered in a new way. Reduce everyone who is in what is much, and will take root or not, it's the tenth thing. This is confusing, and you can never say for sure what an abbreviation means without knowing the meaning of the letters that their creators have given them.

But let's imagine for a few days that the assumption is correct, and each letter of our alphabet has a strictly defined single meaning in all words where it is present. And let's try to find out this very value for at least a couple of letters of our alphabet. Let's try ?!

To do this, we need to identify a certain system on the basis of which we can conduct our research, and this will not even seem from afar as anti-scientific nonsense. Actually, it will be a little easier for us to do this. We are not dealing with history, where facts, one might say, do not exist in principle. This is not physics or chemistry, where you need to have specific knowledge, and the facts themselves are independent of a person. This is not psychology, where all knowledge is only statistical, and exceptions to it indicate that "all people are different." We will work with the words we use every day. With words, the meanings and meanings of which come with us in an unchanged state from our very first ancestors, who, it is logical to assume, gave each letter a special meaning and placed it in each separate word for a reason. It is the words that will be indisputable facts in our research, because our ancestors are us, stretched out in time. And since we ourselves have created these facts, it means that their objectivity is beyond doubt.

So, we have the assumption that each letter has its own meaning, unchanged regardless of the word in which it is located. Moreover, all words are abbreviations. Let's develop our theory from this starting point, and in the future we will no longer assume anything, but we will use only facts and logical conclusions that do not contradict common sense.

Let's start with the simplest. In view of the fact that we have tens of thousands of words, at the same time consisting of only a few tens of letters, we can safely say that each of these letters will have some serious, global, comprehensive, but at the same time quite specific meaning. In the frame and on the wall.