n8s a1e l2e
When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
You have no idea what the title of this blog post means, right? Good. You shouldn’t. it says “Numeronyms are Lame”. I am sure that outside of the tech-sphere, the usage of numeronyms are uncommon (so uncommon that my spell-check thinks it is not a word). A numeronym is an abbreviation of a word which includes numerals.
There are three types of numeronyms:
- homophones: a replacement of a whole or portion of a word with a number (p2p, gr8, l8r)
- pure: all numbers (143 (I love you), 419 (for one night or one night stand), even chinese has this: 五二零 = 我爱你 = I love you).
- contractions: replacing the letters between the first and last letters of a word with the count of the letters (i18n = internationalization; k8s = kubernetes, g11n = globalization).
Homophones are fine and other than “2” replacing “to”, I do not see them in professional settings so it really seems like they are a stylistic choice by the user.
I also have no issue with the purely numerical numeronyms as they are a clever way to conceal a concept in numbers.
My main issue is with the contraction-type of numeronym for the following reasons:
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They are meant to convey information, generally in a business setting, but obscure the meaning of the word. If you have never seen i14y before you would never know that it means interoperability. Every time I have come across a contraction-type numeronym I have to ask someone or look it up because it completely obscure the meaning of the word. Furthermore, there are other words that fit i14y like: ichnographically, ichthyologically, iconoclastically, immunochemically, etc.
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If you are using the word so much that you have to shorten it you should know how to spell the word. If you are typing it so frequently, you should be able to type it with ease. It seems like complete laziness to have to replace ~10 letters here and there.
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If you are not using the word that frequently, why can you not take the time to spell it out? how many times are you actually writing the word “internationalization” that you need to shorten it to i18n?
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It seems like some of the push for these contractions are for political/globalist reasons. I say that for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the examples given in wikipedia are: globalization, accessibility (a11y), localization, internationalization, etc. It is newspeak and an uninspired mutilation of the English language.
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Do those that use i18n over internationalization or a11y over accessibility actually think they are being inclusive of other cultures by simplifying the English language? Why would they not use k6a for 国際化 (internationalization in Japanese), why must it be a bastardization of English words only? Why would a non-native speaker find i18n simpler to understand than the complete word, at least they can use the prefixes and suffixes to try and parse the word.
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The contractions contain no pronunciation information. You literally cannot sound out i18n. So now if you do not know what a contraction means you have to say “what does aye ay teen enn mean.” You are forced to produce ugly utterances into the world for the sake of someone else’s unimaginative laziness (at best) or someone else’s political agenda (at worst). I think most people do not actually understand the psychological and physical effects utterances have on the speaker, listener, and reality in general. We convey our experiences with language, the listener creates his own experience through the act of understanding the speaker’s utterances, ugly language creates an ugly experience for both the speaker and listener. This ugly experience influences both subject and object. While the influence may be minute, it compounds over time.
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If you use these contractions you are this meme:
