OMG. Another reversal?
Was at work yesterday and saw the now familiar acronym “OMG” on a page.
OK, so it used to be that when I saw “OMG,” I translated it in my head: “Oh, my God.”
And then it came to pass that I translated it in my head just soundwise, as “oh em jee.”
Now I just see it and the process happens so instantaneously, it’s barely there: I simply register the letters almost as a pictograph and the associated feeling—one of surprise, usually with youthful overtones—manifests itself. (No, I am not high.)
Western writing—aka the alphabet—works differently from Eastern writing, such as Chinese ideograms. The alphabet uses individual pictures to represent the individual sounds that combine to form words; an ideogram, as the name implies, represents an idea, or even a combination of ideas, in and of itself. The alphabet is a little more economical—with only 26 symbols, it can convey an infinity of ideas, whereas there are literally thousands of Chinese ideograms (although only a few hundred may be used regularly).
Anyway, I wrote about the reversal of the overheated medium the other week, and as I gazed upon the OMG yesterday, I wondered if that wasn’t what was happening here with the acronyms that have come part and parcel with widespread electronic text communication. They’re flipping over into ideograms.
Just my thoughts, just my thoughts.
—j
How about WTF? Many ugly brain pictures there…
kewgr | 11:15 am on 18 December 2007
Oh, FFS.
Annie | 12:29 pm on 18 December 2007
I think this connects to the “I heart Huckabee” phenomenon where the symbol had been translated back from ideogram to standard alphabet while creating new usage for “heart” in process.
Interesting on WTF; My brain registers early (now quaint) internet acronyms like ROFL as fully contained and not 4 separate words anymore. Not sure if it’s all ideogram related though. In finance, EBITDA is now standard usage - it’s become a standalone word. I know what it stands for, but ultimately it’s just another word for profit. Thanks for making me think.
Andrew | 12:02 am on 18 December 2007
Andrew: Similarly, in the insurance industry, acronyms like COBRA, HIPAA, etc. have become standalone words. Most people in the business know the doctrine of these laws by heart, but cannot remember what the letters stand for.
Annie | 11:09 am on 18 December 2007
This is surprisingly interesting. I may have to start reading this blog.
L-bear | 12:12 pm on 18 December 2007
@Annie: Something that drives me nuts is organizations like the FFA, which used to stand for Future Farmers of America, but now doesn’t stand for anything. The name is just FFA.
I don’t know. That seems so wrong to me. Like when someone’s named DJ but it’s not initials.
jmoney | 9:37 pm on 18 December 2007
[...] a little nervous—visitors are as likely to find pictures of the Pussycat Dolls here as they are riffs on the reversal of the overheated medium (and possibly erroneous riffs, at that)—but I suppose media ecologists are more suited to [...]
Another Damned Blog » Claude Lévi-Strauss is still alive | scribblescribblescribble.com | 11:17 am on 18 December 2007
Here’s a crazy thing, though: when you see a word, do you sound it out in your head?
I know we were kind of taught to do that when we learned phonics, so, maybe. But I also know that–what’s it called–”subvocal reading,” where you actually hear the words in your imagination as you read them, is about a tenth as fast as regular old reading.
I think–and I’m not 100% sure about this–I think that English words actually have a dual function for practiced readers: on the one hand, they’re a collection of phonics that can be read allowed. But on the other hand, they are a number of symbols that compose a single word, which can be apprehended in its entirely and associated directly with its semiotic.
Words like that can function like ideograms, but then the key difference becomes the composition of the word itself: English has a modular structural composition to its words, and thus a more efficient method of creation than Chinese, but many of the processes are identical.
braak | 2:43 pm on 18 December 2007
@braak: I don’t know! I mean, as I read your comment, I was hearing the words in my head, but that might have been because it was something I was reading carefully. I’ll have to see what I do when I pick up the SF book I just started tonight.
Instinctively, I’d agree that experienced English readers must apprehend words as symbols more than as linear phonic-combinations. I’m less convinced, though, that that’s the same as how readers of Chinese absorb ideograms.
Josh | 9:31 pm on 18 December 2007