acronyms

Peter Hi! I’m Peter.

Catherine And I’m Catherine. Welcome to 6 Minute Vocabulary. And today we’re talking about acronyms.

Peter Examples of acronyms are the name FIFA , that’s the international federation of association football, and BBC .

Catherine We’ll talk about where these names come from and we’ll tell you how we say and write them.

Peter There will be a quiz of course; and we’ll also bring you a top tip for remembering these words.

Catherine Let’s start by listening to James. He’s giving a lecture about the United Nations.

Peter And while you’re listening: Can you guess where the name UNESCO comes from?

INSERT James The United Nations aims to encourage international cooperation and preserve world peace. A number of different organisations are part of it. One of the most well-known is UNESCO . That ‘s the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. But you may also have heard of the W-H-O , the I-M-F , and the W-B-G , for example. Do you know what they are? The UN performs most of its work through these different organisations.

Peter So we asked you: Can you guess where the name UNESCO comes from?

Catherine And the answer is that it comes from the first letters of the organisation’s full name: U nited N ations E ducational, S cientific and C ultural O rganisation: UNESCO .

Peter Now with acronyms like UNESCO , we say them as if they are a word: UNESCO . We don ‘t spell out the letters separately. We don’t say U-N-E-S-C-O .

Catherine Other acronyms like this that are very well-known are NATO , the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and NASA , the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Peter That’s easy for you to say. By the way, FIFA is a bit of a trick. The acronym actually comes from the French name for the organisation, not the English. Federation Internationale de Football Association.

Catherine Nice accent.

Peter Merci.

Catherine So what about the other acronyms James mentioned? Let’s listen.

INSERT CLIP 1 James
… you may also have heard of the W-H-O , the I-M-F , and the W-B-G , for example.

Catherine Now these next acronyms are a bit different. We spell out the initial letters separately. Can you guess what these letters stand for? W-H-O .

Peter That’s the World Health Organisation.

Catherine It is. Now: I-M-F …

Peter It’s the International Monetary Fund.

Catherine W-B-G ?

Peter The World Bank Group.

Catherine And it’s worth remembering that we usually write both types of acronym with capital letters. Now for another clip.

INSERT CLIP 2 James The UN performs most of its work through these different organisations.

Catherine Now it’s interesting that James started off by saying the United Nations. But here he says the UN . Why ‘s that do you think?

Peter Well, using acronyms saves time and it makes the organisations seem more familiar. With the second type of acronym like U-N , where you spell out the letters, we sometimes use the full name the first time we mention the organisation and then, once we’ve done that, we go on to use the acronym as we continue to talk about it.

Catherine OK. But with the first type of acronym like UNESCO , where you say it as a word, we nearly always use just the acronym. That’s probably because the full names are often so long that the acronyms have actually become like words to replace them.

Peter Yes, in fact there are a few words in English that used to be acronyms but have now become ordinary words. These words are not written with capital letters. For example scuba as in scuba diving. This comes from s elf- c ontained u nderwater b reathing a pparatus. And laser comes from l ight a mplification by s timulated e mission of r adiation.

Catherine Wow, well yes, that is quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

Peter It certainly does go on…

IDENT
6 Minute Vocabulary from BBC Learning English.

Peter We’re talking about acronyms.

Catherine And it’s quiz time! And this time it’s a bit of a general knowledge game because we’re going to see if you know what some popular acronyms stand for. And not all of them are organisations. So number one: WWW .

Peter It’s the World Wide Web.

Catherine It is, indeed. Now number two: RAM .

Peter
That’s Random Access Memory. We use it for a type of computer memory.

Catherine We do. And the last one: CIA .

Peter It’s the Central Intelligence Agency in the US.

Catherine It is indeed - and well done if you got them all right.

Peter And before we go, here’s a vocabulary tip. There are a lot of acronyms in everyday life as well as those that are organisations. For example: ATM , DIY and FYI . We use them all the time. When you see an acronym written in capital letters, check out what it stands for online or find a dictionary. They do make sense and are easy to remember when you know the full name or meaning.

Peter There’s more about this at bbclearningenglish.com. Join us again soon for more 6 Minute Vocabulary.

Both Bye!