Alphabetical (25 page)

My first stint at the BBC coincided with Mao Tse-tung's switch to mass induction into the wisdom of his
Little Red Book
, and we saw on TV millions of Chinese people using the book to salute the Great Helmsman, whilst chorusing ‘Little Red Book'. As part of BBC staff training, we were issued with a training book, and for some reason one of my co-trainees stood up in class and saluted our own great helmsman with it, calling out: ‘HST! HST! HST!' He went on to become an eminent TV producer, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. I'm sure that moment was seminal for him.

A moment in left-wing political history turned what I knew as ‘the Party' or ‘the Communist Party' into ‘the CP' at about the same time that a flowering of initialled parties and journals appeared, disappeared and went on appearing: SLL, IS, CPB (M-L), WRP, RCP, SWP. This goes back to the time of Karl Marx and William Morris and organizations such as the Socialist League and its successor the SDF, the Social Democratic Federation, which my father's grandfather belonged to. No matter how seriously I and others might take this, the constant juggling of the words ‘socialist', ‘communist', ‘workers', ‘labour', ‘league', ‘party', ‘federation', ‘revolutionary' and the like has proved to be a fruitful source of comedy. There was an opportunistic echo of this in the naming of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. ‘Nazi' is nothing to do with initials, though (or with workers and socialists), as ‘Nazi' comes from
lifting the first two syllables of the phrase as pronounced in German. NSDAP is the initialization.

Medicine is an example of how the professions proliferate initials. In education, we have the names of institutions, qualifications, reports, punishments, subjects, teaching methods and more. These change. I was taught ‘PT' and ‘RI' (‘Physical Training' and ‘Religious Instruction'). These are now ‘PE' and ‘RS' (‘Physical Education' and ‘Religious Studies'). ‘BFL' can be ‘Behaviour for Learning'; ‘C3' can be a detention because it's the third level of punishment or ‘consequence'. The National Literacy Strategy, or the NLS, ruled over education with an iron hand for about ten years until it was suddenly abolished. Likewise the Language in the National Curriculum Project, or LINC. Perhaps being given initials in education is a stipulation that has its own built-in death sentence.

Doctors are said to produce an underground language of initials to describe patients behind their backs. Have they really marked patients' notes with ‘NFN' (‘normal for Norfolk'), ‘FLK' (‘funny-looking kid'), or ‘GROLIES' (‘
Guardian
reader of low intelligence in ethnic skirt')? Are these true or apocryphal? There is also ‘LOBNH' (‘lights on but nobody home'); ‘CNS-QNS' (‘central nervous system – quantity not sufficient'); and ‘PP' (‘pumpkin positive') meaning that if you shine a pen-light in the patient's mouth, their head lights up as there is no brain.

As children we played with the initials ‘PLP'. We would lean on someone and say, ‘Are you a PLP?' If the person said, ‘No,' we would say, ‘Then you're not a proper living person.' If they then said, ‘Yes,' we would say, ‘Then you're a public leaning post.' I hear, ‘It needs a bit of TLC' (‘tender loving care') and ‘But are there any PLUs?'(‘people like us'). As long as initial-clusters like these are code, they work as includers-excluders but once they've been decoded and appear in stand-up comedians' routines, they are damaged goods.

Initials are also useful for graffiti – they're quick to paint, and are instantly recognizable, performing a similar function to dogs' wee on walls. The geography of football and political affiliation can be charted in the initials drawn on the country's public surfaces. The rebus of a heart or the phrase ‘= scum' have proved to be the most useful additions. It's said that the number of times you graffiti your initials on walls is in inverse proportion to the amount of power you think you have.

If there was a prize for surprising me with a use of initials, I would have awarded it to J. D. Salinger for having his characters say, ‘Jesus H. Christ'. At the time, I thought that he invented it as an irreverent absurdist joke, but not so. Mark Twain was on to it long before, claiming that one of his pals in the print shop where he was working was ticked off for writing ‘J. C.', for ‘diminishing' Jesus Christ's name. He replaced it with ‘Jesus H. Christ', thereby aggrandizing it, presumably. People have been on the hunt for the word behind the ‘H' with about as much chance of success as working out who ‘W. H.' is – unless it was solved when the film
Jesus Henry Christ
came out in 2012.

Christianity was an underground religion for a couple of centuries. The early Christians used a visual acronymic pun to show those in the know where they were. They used the symbol of a fish, which possibly worked like this:

The Greek word for ‘fish' is ‘ίχθύς' (‘ichthys') or ‘ΙΧΘΥΣ'.

I (‘I', ‘Iota'): ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (‘Iêsoûs') is ‘Jesus'.

Χ (‘KH', ‘Khi'): ‘ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ' (‘Khristòs') is ‘Christ'.

Θ (‘TH', ‘Theta'): ‘ΘΕΟΥ' (‘Theoû') is ‘God'.

Υ (‘U', ‘Upsilon'): ‘ΥΙΟΣ' (‘Huiòs') is ‘Son'.

Σ (‘S', ‘Sigma'): ‘ΣΩΤΗΡ' (‘Sôt
r') is ‘Saver'.

In short, it's devotional wit.

History lessons about Charles II were momentarily made more enjoyable when the coincidental acronym of ‘cabal' was pointed out to us. The word itself is of Hebrew origin – ‘cabala', ‘Kabbalah', ‘Qabala', etc – meaning the mystical interpretation of Judaic texts. Charles II's ministers were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale, and the gag was that they were a ‘cabal' or ‘The Cabal', probably because they were thought to have sympathies for Roman Catholicism. Part of the Protestant narrative about Britain is that Catholics get into secret huddles and plot how to get in league with Catholic countries. Huddle or not, this particular cabal wasn't very cabal-ish as they fell out with each other, though they did secure a treaty with France, thereby proving the point that they were a cabal.

Acronym-spotting purists declare that the ‘true' acronym must be made up of the initial letters of the words in question – and only the initial letters. Nothing else. Like ‘scuba' – self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Perfect. Reluctantly, they admit to the club the mongrel form: acronyms made up of initials along with bits of other words in the phrase – like ‘radar' – radio detection and ranging. In 1901, the National Biscuit Company labelled one of its products as Nabisco and this has stuck. Some acronyms only work if you leave out initials of words that are in the original phrase: ‘laser' – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. C'mon, guys, it should have been the much catchier ‘labseor' as in ‘There was a fantastic labseor light show in town last night.' Serious pedants object to ‘PIN number' as it unpacks as ‘personal identification number number'.

Any campaign worth its salt (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) has to call itself a name that works both in its full version and as an appropriate-sounding acronym. It's a foul libel that activists have sometimes spent more time inventing the acronym than campaigning. ASH comes from Action on Smoking and Health.
Another way of creating an acronym is to take a word like ‘stop' or ‘release' and use each letter in the same way that acrostics are written. So ‘STOPP' was created as a piece of self-help guidance:

Stop and take a step back

Take a breath

Observe

Pull back – put in some perspective

Practise what works

This is where mnemonics, acronyms and acrostics overlap: the well-known MAA effect.

THE STORY OF

•
A VERTICAL WAVY
line with five peaks appears as a hieroglyph in ancient Egypt some 4,000 years ago. It meant ‘water' and indicated the sound ‘n'. In ancient Semitic inscriptions from 1800
BCE
, the number of waves has been reduced to three. It is thought these people borrowed the meaning, calling it in their language ‘mem', meaning ‘water' and indicating the ‘m' sound. The Phoenicians in about 1000
BCE
reduced the number of ripples to two, retained the vertical arrangement and curled the waves even more. It was still ‘mem', meaning ‘water' and carrying the sound ‘m'. By 800
BCE
, the sign has started to become horizontal and the waves have become zigzags, so that by the time the Greeks borrow it from the Phoenicians in around 725
BCE
, it looks like a modern printed ‘m' with a long right-hand tail. It is now called ‘mu' and is voiced as ‘m'. The Romans added the serifs, and made the letter entirely symmetrical.

m

Charlemagne's scribes borrowed a curvy Latin ‘m' from the fifth century for their ‘minuscule' and this was the lower-case ‘m' that the Italian and French printers borrowed in the 1500s.

PRONUNCIATION OF THE LETTER-NAME

Like most of the other continuous consonants, ‘em' enables a speaker to emphasize the letter sound, distinguishing it from its near neighbour ‘n'.

PRONUNCIATION OF THE LETTER

‘M' can appear at the beginning, middle or ends of words,
inviting us to close our lips and hum for a mini-second. Lexicographers decided that a ‘terminal m' should be doubled when we add ‘-ing' or ‘-ed', as in ‘hum, humming, hummed', to distinguish it from the pronunciation of ‘fume, fuming, fumed'. The same goes for the distinction between ‘tum, tummy' and ‘gloom, gloomy'. In the extraordinary word ‘mnemonic' it's silent, and when followed by a ‘b' as in ‘numb', ‘thumb', ‘jamb' and ‘comb' we pretend the ‘b' isn't there. ‘Damn' was once written as ‘d—n' as it was so rude (or not written at all). It retains the ‘n' from its parent words ‘damned' and ‘damnation'; and we write ‘condemn' and ‘hymn' without voicing the ‘n'.

‘M' is rather uncooperative when it comes to combining with other consonants. We like words that end with ‘-mp', ‘-mping' and ‘-mpy', as in ‘bump, bumpy, bumping', and the same with ‘clump', ‘dump', ‘damp', ‘clamp' and ‘jump'. We are OK with it being near a ‘b' when we can put it next to a new syllable as in ‘combine', ‘timber', ‘remember' and ‘imbue'. When African anti-colonial movements came to London in the 1950s, we learned how to say Tom Mboya. Migration and global news services have helped us learn this sound ever since. Placing consonant sounds before the ‘m' gives us ‘rhythm', ‘film', ‘pragmatic' and ‘capitalism'.

Mostly, though, we like ‘m' to be followed by a vowel sound: ‘ma', ‘me', ‘my' and ‘more' are amongst our first sounds. The words we have for talking quietly or inaudibly include ‘murmur', ‘mumble' and ‘mutter'.

‘Mmm' means ‘something nice is happening'; ‘hmm' means ‘I'm thinking'; ‘hmph' means disgust or contempt. Mothers all over the world have ‘m' in the words for ‘mother' – ‘mum', ‘mom', ‘mummy', ‘mammy', ‘mommy',
‘mama' and ‘mamma', and babies make this one of their first consonants as they learn that their lips can close and open.

Sound-play with ‘m' also gives us ‘Mimi', ‘mime', ‘me-me-me', the ‘Moomins', ‘
Mamma Mia
', ‘M&Ms', ‘Eminem', ‘money-men', ‘mind over matter' and ‘make a mountain out of a molehill'. ‘There's method in his madness' and Malvolio's midnight cry, ‘Masters, are you mad?' are Shakespearean ‘m'-phrases. My brother's imitation of an underground train waiting in the station is: ‘miniminiminiminiminiminimini . . .'