From Friend Karen R some more acronymania--here with a French twist.
Hey George,
I thought I would bring a couple of things to your attention that I thought were kind of interesting, being from a bilingual nation and all.
One is that Syndrome Immune Deficit Acqueri * (le SIDA) sounds suspiciously like the wonderful organization CIDA, and I wonder what French-speaking people think of that! (I think CIDA was there first.)
And if you think we like acronyms, the French-speaking population is crazy about them! They add vowels whenever possible to make them into words; they add endings and turn them into verbs.
Followers of the PQ ( as in Parti Quebecois) and BQ (Bloc Quebecois) are called péquistes and béquistes. CEGEP is the common word for college (maybe Centre d’Etude General et Pratique). See? It is so common I have never really thought about what it means.
Universite de Quebec in its various locations are known as:
UQAM ( a Montreal) say it / ookam /
UQAC ( a Chicoutimi) / ookak /
I’m sure there are others but they escape me just now. UQATR I think (Trois Rivieres).
Children love their hard-cover comic albums (BD—Bandes dessinees, written bédé) and a graphic artist who works on these is a bédéiste.
Which reminds me, a book about the ABC’s is called an abécédaire, as in ABC . (ahhbaysay)
