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For some reason, I'm focusing on abbreviations in which there is a spelling alteration from the original word fragment. I'm not talking about things like television = TV, but more like refrigerator = fridge with the added d. I'm talking about abbreviated words where the pronunciation is simply a slice off of the original word, but with a spelling alteration from the original word fragment. For that reason, I also exclude bike = bicycle.
The ones I've noted are:
fridge = refrigerator (or Frigidaire, depending on your source)
dub = double (audio)
mike = microphone (audio)
trank = tranquilizer
UK
pram = perambulator
telly = television
Do you have any other examples, maybe in some specialized region or area of expertise?
The first I thought of was nuke for nuclear.
I would like to point out that the preferred spelling for people who work in audio is "mic." After I was corrected years ago, I thought it was the only spelling but after checking I found that both are acceptable. This really doesn't change your question since "mike" is probably more commonly used.
Dick said:
The first I thought of was nuke for nuclear.
I would like to point out that the preferred spelling for people who work in audio is "mic." After I was corrected years ago, I thought it was the only spelling but after checking I found that both are acceptable. This really doesn't change your question since "mike" is probably more commonly used.
I've never worked in the industry, but I use mic, and thought I was the only one who did. I also stand in the minority by using synch instead of sync. I have no idea why these spelling alterations are jarring to me.
I would never use doub for dub. I have little call for the word trank (or tranq). But I would probably opt for tranq in an fit of orthographic solipsism.
Glenn, about your original list plus "synch" and a few others that haven't appeared here yet: The change in spelling is necessary to indicate the correct pronunciation. Going one at a time:
Properly speaking, your first example should be spelled "frig", but that's already taken. The 'e' is necessary to make the 'g' soft (as it does in "refrigerator"), but that makes the pronunciation rhyme with "Lije" (ie the second syllable in "Elijah"; or possibly if I saw "frige" for the first time I'd try saying "freezh", as though it were a borrowed French word. Adding the 'd' makes the pronunciation of "fridge" unambiguous. Maybe "fridg" would have been better, but it isn't likely to catch on now.
You could shorten "bicycle" to "bic", but as soon as you make a verb out of it you have to indicate in some way that the 'c' is hard; otherwise "bicer" must be pronounced "BUY-sir". By back construction the shortened form has become "bike" even where the spelling change isn't necessary. The same for "mic", except that the process of back-construction is incomplete; purists still use "mic" where it'll work, and go to the 'k' only where 'e' or 'i' follow, as in "miking".
I never knew 'til now where "dub" came from. 
Nearly the same thing is going on with "sync", although fewer people remember that the proper short form lacks the 'h'; and again, when you're "synching" something you have to keep the 'h' from the original "synchron-" root in order to mark the 'k' sound, because "syncing" doesn't indicate the proper pronunciation.
With some words we change the final '-c' not to '-k' or '-ch' but to '-ck'; I can panic about something, but when I'm panicking I need to invent the extra letter out of thin air, so to speak. Not quite out of thin air; "panicking" and "panicked" have been the acknowledged spellings for centuries, I think.
"Natch" is another good example; the 't' sound in "naturally" is pronounced as a 'tch' because of the long 'u' after it, so when you shorten the word you have to find some other way to indicate that it isn't pronounced "nat".
I'll add "catalogue". In normal parlance all but a few people spell it "catalog", which is fine; but before a suffix you have to keep the 'u' (as in "catalogued") or it doesn't pronounce right.
This sort of thing goes on in Romance languages, too. In Spanish it's institutionalized. Busco ("I search"), for example, ends in 'e' in the subjunctive so it's spelled busque, and llego becomes llegue. In the other direction, esparce ("he scatters") changes to esparzo in the first person ("I scatter"), and dirige ("he directs") to dirijo; otherwise the pronunciation would have a hard 'c' and a hard 'g' respectively. There's a whole system of spelling changes built into Spanish spelling, much like what we do in English when we double a final consonant ("hit" and "hitting", for example).
Martha Barnette
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