English is a language that is constantly evolving.
And constantly abbreviating.
Yes, honestly, any chance we get to shorten what we have to say or to get from one idea to the next in the shortest way possible, we’ll take it, and use it over and over again. And if we can borrow from other languages, even better. And if it’s from Latin, better again. After all, Latin words make up 60% of the vocabulary used in the English language.
So, here are five Latin abbreviations we use every day in English.
In speaking.
In writing.
On billboards, in magazines, on the radio, in podcasts, and just about anywhere you can imagine English-speaking people want to communicate.
None of the abbreviated pairs of letters that I present to you today are going to be new to you. I’m sure you’ve seen them all before. But, have you ever asked a native speaker what they stand for?
Would they even know? The honest answer is – not always!
But at the end of this blog entry, you WILL.
1. A.D., B.C., C.E. and B.C.E
Let’s go right back in time and start with the ABC of Latin abbreviations.
The basics, that is.
And we might even add D and E for good measure.
A.D.
The year is 247, in Diocletian time, that is Anno Diocletiano. Diocletian was a murderous and bloodthirsty Roman Emperor, born in what is today Solin, Croatia. He loved nothing more than killing Christians.
Speaking of Christians, they had a big problem deciding when Easter was each year and so finally, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, upon the urging of Pope John I, came up with a new way to calculate time, taking the year of Christ’s birth as the first year. That is Anno Domini – the Year of Our Lord, which in English we neatly abbreviated to A.D. (pronounced Ay Dee). Mr Exiguus came up with his audacious new calendar in 525 A.D. and it was first publicly used by him in 532, that is 532 years after the birth of Christ. God triumphed over Diocletian, his archnemesis on earth. Holy Emperor Charlemagne used the new terminology in a lot of his official documents and the use of A.D. was cemented after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century. English follows Latin convention by placing the letters A.D. before the year, however after centuries and millennia, the letters are placed afterwards.
· A.D. 1888
· The 4th Century A.D.
· The Second Millennium A.D
B.C
While initially, the idea of what to call the years before Christ’s birth didn’t occur to Dionysius Exiguus, they were of great interest to the English monk, Venerable Bede of Northumbria, who was the first, in his A.D. 731 masterpiece “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” to use the abbreviation B.C. (or similar). This abbreviation, (incidentally) is placed after the year. Oh, and B.C. simply meant Before Christ. And B.C. is pronounced /bee-see/, just in case it might not be clear.
And now, I know you must have loads of questions. Like, when did we start adding an E onto the end of B.C. and did it have any connection with Christ? Let’s see, shall we?
B.C.E and C.E
These abbreviations are not of Latin origin but they are connected to A.D. and B.C. because they are alternatives that are increasingly popular. Many people mistakenly think Before Common Era and Common Era were coined in recent times to avoid hurting the sensibilities of people who were not Christian.
In reality, writers such as Johannes Kepler in 1615 were referring to the ‘Vulgar Era’, when the word vulgar referred to something ‘common’ or ‘everyday’. Somehow the Latin Vulgaris Aerae morphed into Common Era which we then conveniently abbreviated to C.E. and pronounced as you see it: /see-ee/. In his “Post Biblical History of the Jews” in 1856, Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall mentions events in Jerusalem in 70 C.E, that is, in the year 70 of the Common Era.
2. A.M and P.M.
It’s time to talk about the time. Latin style.
But, before we do, we might need to go right back to Mesopotamia or Ancient Egypt. You see, Rome inherited the 12-hour clock from these more far-flung empires. They needed to be able to say if they were talking about 11 in the morning or eleven at night and so began our love affair with ante meridiem (before midday) and post meridiem (after midday), which are abbreviated as a.m. and p.m. respectively.
As you might have noticed, in writing, we use lower case letters and each letter is followed by a full stop (or period, if you use American English). When speaking we say “A-M” /ay-em/ and “P-M” /pee-em/.
When we specify a time, we place the number before the letters, so 11 a.m. will be pronounced /11_ay_em/.
Mechanical clocks started to be manufactured in Continental Europe some time in the 14th century, and as the 24-hour clock was preferred there, this transferred to the first clocks. Europe went 24-hour but England and her satellites remained resiliently loyal to the 12-hour model – and this has persisted up to the present day. Australia, Canada (with the exception of Québec), Ireland and New Zealand all tend to prefer the 12-hour clock. When I write notes for my brother using the 24-hour clock, he gets seriously confused. When I’m in Madrid, I get confused and often use the 24-hour clock and add a.m. or p.m. after the number, even when it´s not necessary. So, let´s be clear, no number greater than 12 should precede a.m. or p.m. Ever.
Oh, and there is one confusing thing. Where do midday and midnight fit into the a.m / p.m. paradigm?
Midnight is 12 a.m.
Midday is 12 p.m.
Full stop.
3. E.G
There are a lot of snobs out there.
Some show off by wearing expensive branded clothing.
Others prefer flashy cars or chunky jewelry.
Those who want to show off how much they know may use Latin abbreviations to do so. Good for them, if they know what they are talking about and use the correct ones. Obviously, by using them incorrectly, they convey quite the opposite effect they were supposed to produce – that of appearing learned and erudite. One of the great downfalls of the modern English user is e.g. e.g. is the abbreviated form of exemplia grati , a nice Latin phrase which means for example.
It is supposed to introduce one or more possibilities and to give your listener some extra information to back up what you are saying. If you visited some of the art museums in Madrid´s Golden Circle you might say:
Whenever I visit Madrid, I try to visit as many art museums as I can, e.g. the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofia Modern Art Museum, Caixa Forum and the Thyssen Bornemizsa National Museum.
Or
I’m quite partial to Spanish cured meats, e.g. jamon serrano, cecina, morcilla, chorizo and botifarra.
In both cases, you share something general and then you flesh it out with examples. The abbreviation e.g. is used in spoken language and replaces the longer for example and is pronounced /ee-gee/. Listen out for it. And then practise using it correctly.
4. I.E. (in other words)
When you want to give a bit more detail about something important you’ve just said, you use i.e.
At least, I hope you do. Unfortunately, a lot of people confuse i.e. with e.g., even native speakers.
This is what I want you to learn to avoid.
The letters i.e. are an abbreviation of the Latin phrase id est which is a conveniently short way of saying in other words or even, that is to say. It is quite simple to use. You make a statement and you indicate your intention to go into things further by using the letters i.e. Remember, i is pronounced /aye/ and e is pronounced /ee/. So, i.e. is pronounced /aye_ee/.
My boyfriend dumped me last week – i.e. we broke up.
I have a bad headache, my body aches and I have a temperature – i.e. I think I´ll be self-isolating for a few days.
5. P.S. Post Scriptum
This is the perfect time to mention our last Latin abbreviation of the day: P.S. which you may not known is the abbreviated version of post scriptum. As we’ve already seen, post has nothing to do with letters or stamps, but more to do with what comes after. If p.m. or post meridiem means after midday, then it might not surprise us that post scriptum means after writing. In other words, an addendum. Which is something we add to something that has already been written (and we assume finished).
If you write a letter and sign it and then remember you need to include an extra piece of information, you can do so by writing the letters p.s. (pronounced pee-es, by the way), followed by the extra text which you feel is so important to include.
In informal speech, people often use it light-heartedly almost as a replacement for the term by the way, which, (by the way), is often abbreviated in writing as btw, but that´s for another blog entry). If you’ve told your best friend all your news over coffee and then you remember something that you forgot to mention, you might preface sharing this last piece of news with something like “Oh, P.S., I ……”
And so we come to the end of another blog post. There are no addendums.
Okay, I lied. There is a P.P.S, which is precisely that – P.P.S or post-post scriptum, which is an addition to an existing addition. And it goes on and on. But there will be no more extra Ps or Ss to this text. I promise.
Our Roman ancestors didn’t know everything, but they knew a lot. And many of those things have survived right up to the present day. And if something isn’t broken, why fix it? I’m not sure if that is a Roman saying, but it still rings true today, whoever invented it. Latin abbreviations are as popular as ever, so use them when you can, and correctly. Now you know how, you have no excuse.
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