A ＂Nantah＂ robbed several families, and the emerging abbreviations added a lot of ＂troubles＂

　　In recent years, with the development of the Internet and mobile terminals, especially the popularity of smart phones, network language has gradually ushered in the climax of development, and has formed a certain impact and influence on Chinese itself, and new words such as "call" and "children’s shoes" have appeared. These emerging abbreviations, mixed words, alphabetic words and homophonic words are not only popular on the Internet, but also "popular" in various scenes of life. So, how should we treat these new words and whether we need to standardize them? In this issue, we invited four scholars to discuss the above issues for readers.

　　A robbery by several "Nantah" families refers to a case-solving case several years ago. In 2015, Nanchang University published the Charter of Nanchang University in official website, and named it "Nanda" for short, which was a repetition of the long-established abbreviation of "Nanjing University" and aroused public concern. During the discussion, people think that Nanning University can only be called Ningda if it is not called Nanda, but Ningxia University and Ningbo University have problems again. Ningxia University is called "Xiada", which coincides with the pronunciation of "Xiamen University". This has stimulated the humorous ability of netizens to create gimmicks, such as calling Xiamen University "the big door", Shantou University "the big head" and Taiyuan University "too big", and so on.

　　Why do colleges and universities attach so much importance to abbreviations? First, according to the statistics of econometrics, the frequency of Chinese words depends largely on the length of words, and the longer the words, the lower the frequency of use. That is to say, a university has a short and loud abbreviation, which will have unexpected effects on improving the visibility of the school and making it easier for people to mention it. Secondly, in people’s daily communication, the abbreviation ru sentence is often more in line with the rhythm and rhythm of speech. For example, "troops stationed in Beijing" and "people coming to Shanghai" are more in line with the reading and breathing habits of "2+2" rhythm than "troops stationed in Beijing" and "people coming to Shanghai", so they are easier to be selected by speakers. Thirdly, it is easier for listeners to remember the object of conversation by using abbreviations. For example, "China University of Science and Technology has developed rapidly in recent years" is better than "China University of Science and Technology has developed rapidly in recent years".

　　The abbreviation of universities belongs to the category of abbreviated words in linguistics. It is generally believed that people like to use abbreviations because the speaker always wants to make his meaning clear in the shortest possible words (inertia psychology under the principle of language economy); Another reason is that the human brain’s information processing ability is limited. If the sentence is too long, the listener will remember the back and forget the front, so compressing some parts of the sentence can be more conducive to sentence understanding. Then there is the self-expression advantage of the university abbreviation mentioned above. For these reasons, languages of all ethnic groups have the habit of using abbreviations. For example, in English documents, some long units and concepts will be marked with acronyms when the word appears for the first time, such as the World Trade Organization, and when it is mentioned later, it will be replaced by WTO. There are also many ways to abbreviate Chinese. Besides English, there are also ways to abbreviate words: ① Abbreviation (Internet celebrity — Online celebrity); Section division (such as the abbreviation "CPPCC" for "Political Consultative Conference"); ③ Headword sharing method (such as "universities, primary and secondary schools, import and export, entry and exit", etc.); (4) Co-deletion of headwords (such as "being more advanced than learning, catching up with the advanced, helping the advanced and surpassing the advanced" constitutes "being more advanced than learning");⑤ Sentences are condensed into words (such as "conversion from military to civilian, upgrading from college to undergraduate, changing profits into taxes"); ⑥ Once contracted and then contracted, abbreviations are shortened again according to the occasion of use (such as "People’s Republic of China (PRC)" — "China" — "medium"); ⑦ "consonant", part of phonemes are selected from two syllables to form a new syllable ("two" — "Two" and "Three" — "three", "no need" — "Don’t") and so on.

　　In recent years, the convenience and speed of network communication have stimulated the creativity of netizens, and a large number of new abbreviations have entered the field of communication and extended from online to offline. Such as "rich soil, camp reform, Gao Fushuai, plain and sweet, ignorant, eager to make progress, unwilling to dismantle people’s difficulties, and refusing to move ten times". Many of these new abbreviations compress a complete event into three or four syllables. However, the new abbreviations are widely used, and their negative effects are rapidly emerging. First, the newly created abbreviations are too random and have poor stability, and they are produced and disappeared almost every day, which has caused the user’s memory burden; Second, some abbreviations are relatively obscure in meaning, and many people often don’t know what they mean, resulting in communication barriers; Third, out of the pursuit of fashion, primary and secondary school students use network abbreviations in daily communication and composition, which blurs the learning of standardized language.

　　So, how should abbreviations be standardized? On the one hand, we must be strict. Network abbreviations should not be used or appear in official documents, publications and school teaching. On the other hand, we should be tolerant. No matter how novel the network abbreviation language is, after all, it aims at communication. This factor determines that it can’t be too outrageous, and some distinctive new abbreviations will also settle down and enter the standard words. Back to the university abbreviation mentioned at the beginning, there are the following solutions: First, respect history. In recent decades, "Nanda" has gradually become a recognized abbreviation of Nanjing University. Lingnan University and Nankai University, which were originally called "Nanda", were renamed "Lingnan" and "Nankai" respectively. Second, respect the authority. The abbreviations determined in the university articles of association approved by the Ministry of Education first, and those declared later, should be avoided. For example, Nanchang University, Nantong University and Nanning University should no longer be referred to as "Nanda". Third, now everyone has accepted three-syllable words and four-syllable words, and university abbreviations don’t have to be reduced to two syllables, such as "Beijing Normal University" and "Northeast Normal University" are also good choices.

　　(Author: Wu Changan, Wu Na, professors of Northeast Normal University and postdoctoral fellow of Sun Yat-sen University)