A linguistic analysis of abbreviations, acronyms and ‘acreviations’ in African languages

Abstract

This article analyses the state of abbreviations and acronyms in African languages, especially Xitsonga, in order to determine their formation, structure, punctuation and naming patterns, with the aim of recommending standardisation strategies. The data was collected from various oral and written sources. The study finds that various types of shortenings manifest in human phenomena (names, social positions and relations), names of countries, months, weekdays, holidays, organisations, etc. There are long shortened texts (abstracts, summaries) and short texts (sentence, phrase, word, morpheme, syllable). This article focuses on short texts, which fall into four major categories: compression, acronym, abbreviation and ‘acreviation’/ ‘abbracronym’. Examples of these forms are za < zela (ultimately), Huriri/HRR < Huvo ya Rixaka ya Ririmi (National Language Body) and NSFAS > En-es-FAS. An abbreviation is characterised by spelling the word letter by letter (SABC), or using it only in writing (njl/njll) but uttering its full form when reading (njalo/njalonjalo, etc.). Compression and acronyms are characterised by the word’s pronounceability in normal syllables and across word boundaries. ‘Acreviation’ is derived from acronym+abbreviation while ‘abbracronym’ was formed from abbreviation+acronym. Each form further reveals different structural and punctuation patterns according to the rules of a specific language.