Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Shortening and/or Changing of Words

I am not sure if the British really shorten more words in their every day vocabulary or if we just happen to notice it more since we are "outsiders" here. Either way, it's a strange situation.
The other day I was driving and listening to the radio. The radio presenter was talking about her Christmas holiday and how she got lots of great "prezzies." It started a discussion in our house and Scott and I spent a while discussing the various words we often hear shortened or slightly changed over here which include:

- Spag Bol (Spaghetti Bolognese)
- Ta (Thank you or Thanks) - I seem to get this one often in emails at work as a closing bit...
- Brekkie (Breakfast)
- Prezzies (Presents)
- Hols (Holiday, aka Vacation to Americans) - I often hear, "I am getting ready to go on hols." Or - "How was your hols in BLANK location?"
- Names - for instance, David Beckham is often referred to just as "Becks." Often I hear the same being done for first name - so, Becki becomes "Becks," Jessica becomes "Jess," Russell becomes "Russ," Victoria becomes "Vicks," and so forth....

These examples are really only a few of the myriad of words that are shortened or changed. I am just curious as to why it seems to happen so often over here? I still haven't figured it out....

1 comment:

Iota said...

Fab for fabulous. I've even heard marv for marvelous.

There's an expression that we don't shorten in Britain, that Americans do, which is "to cut a long story short". Over here, you often hear "long story short".