琉球新報(沖縄紙)の英文ページ(1987/10/31/〜1996/12/24)の英語略語について

概要

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This paper deals with abbreviations (acronyms, short forms, initials, symbols, and others) taken from the weekly English pages of the Japanese-language newspaper, The Ryukyu Shimpo. A total of 1045 abbreviations were culled from "The Shimpo Weekly News Digest" (SWND, 31 October 1987〜16 December 1989) and "The Shimpo Weekly News" (SWN, 22 December 1989〜24 December 1996). The purpose of this research was to catalog the abbreviations by initial letter and to analyze the distribution and frequency of those abbreviations in order to provide teachers of 'Current English' with an understanding of the prevalence and significance of English abbreviations in newspaper writing. As might be expected, abbreviations beginning with X, Q, or Z (in descending order of frequency) were the least numerous, in total representing less than one percent of abbreviations. The letters that served as the initial letter for the three largest groups of abbreviations were M, O, N and (in ascending order), each of which provided about eight percent of the total 1045 abbreviations, together accounting for nearly one fourth of all abbreviations. Knowledge of the dominance of N and M is important for English teachers because Japanese-speaking students have difficulty in the distinctive pronunciation of those letters.
2005-03-29