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> You're happy now. The problem still persists. The word only makes sense in the popular TV show reference as Cyborg is the actual short name for Cybernetic Or
by Hokusai 5y ago
> You're happy now.
The problem still persists. The word only makes sense in the popular TV show reference as Cyborg is the actual short name for Cybernetic Organism. It would be like shortening Computer Language as ulang, not very meaningful and probably confusing.
Language has an arbitrary history, but it is molded by evolutionary mechanism. To add random words with little though makes communication more difficult.
For an Enlgish speaker to add Tok-Tik to their vocabulary is cumbersome, to add Tik-Tok is easy. Communication is hard enough to add new words without reason or rhyme.
- groby_b 5y agoLanguage changes. You'll get over it. Or maybe you won't, but the rest of the world will. The only evolutionary mechanism for language is what gets used, not what makes sense to you. Your idea that "cyborg" is somehow special because that's the one contraction that makes sense to you just means you're not participating in that particular evolutionary language branch, not that it's an invalid branch.
- Hokusai 5y ago> Language changes. Not as much as it should, the predominance of orthographic corrector software can slowdown the pace of needed change. The rule I see for Cybernetic Organism to cyborg is to take a syllable of one word and another of the other one. Similarly to Electronic Mail becomes email. There is also a rule that when reading the first and last letters are the most important ones (something like this https://www.dictionary.com/e/typoglycemia/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/typoglycemia/) So, I could be wrong and maybe there are other examples of words that are shortened by taking single letters from the middle of the word. English is not my mother tongue.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> So, I could be wrong and maybe there are other examples of words that are shortened by taking single letters from the middle of the word. “Borg” derives from the already established “cyborg”, the letters are taken from the beginning (if you mean the elisions; the end if you mean the retained letters), not the middle.
- mihaic 5y agoSorry you're being downvoted, I also strongly agree that new-word formation rules usually should be stricter for scientific purposes, and heuristics regarding prefixes and suffixes should apply. There are cases that shorten words even worse (Richard to Rick to Dick by rhyming comes to mind), but all of these I know are colloquial. There does feel like overall standards are lowered here.