The Roots Of Abbreviation

On the subject of northern France today, from which the Normans crossed to England in 1066, I have decided to repost this part of an article.

In the posting "The Story Of The English Language", on the world and economics blog www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com , we saw how the language got the wide span of words, that makes it suitable to be the global language of today, by being basically a Germanic language but then having French words added after the Norman Invasion. What I would like to add to that is how the French-influenced words in the language are far more likely to be the words which are commonly abbreviated. This is simply because these added words were originally alien, and abbreviation was a way of adapting them.

Words of Germanic origin are almost never abbreviated. These are words that can be seen as similar to their counterparts in other northern European languages, such as drink, house, water and, school. This is not a strict rule because "street" is abbreviated as st. and "near" is sometimes abbreviated as nr. and both of these words are of northern European Germanic origin.

French-influenced words commonly use prefixes, such as con-, or suffixes, such as -tion. Some English words have their roots in French clearly seen, such as the word "donate" from the French "donner", meaning "to give". Almost all French words have had their pronunciations anglicized. The first exceptions that I can think of are the words "depot" and "debut".

Two words that illustrate the French way of forming words involves the prefix con-, meaning to put together, and the suffix -tion. Construction means the putting together of a structure. Stellar means something to do with stars, and so constellation means a group of stars that have been put together.
Here is a list of the words that I can think of which are commonly abbreviated. Every one is a word of French origin or form:

Abbr. for abbreviation
Amp. for ampere
Auto for automobile
Ave. for avenue
Avg. for average
Co. for company
Comps. for comparables (in real estate)
Const. for constant
Cont. for continued
Corp. for corporation
Dept. for department
Dist. for distance
Ed. for education
Esq. for esquire
Est. for established
Expo for exposition
Ext. for extension
Freq. for frequency
Gen. for generation
Govt. for government
Info for information
Ins. for insurance
Inst. for institution
Intel for intelligence
Max for maximum
Mfg. for manufacture
Min. for minimum
Neg. for negative
Org. for organization
Pos. for positive
Pres. for pressure
Prop. for propulsion or propellor
Req. for require
Spec. for specifications
St. for saint
Tel for telephone
Temp. for temperature
Var. for variable

Notice how French-sounding all of these words are, and most are the same or similar to their French counterparts. It is very likely that, if English was originally a Romance language and northern European Germanic words were added later, the pattern would be reversed and it would be those words which would be abbreviated today.