The grammatical gender of an acronym versus its unique trademark brand (the case of SADC PF): Pedro Manuel Lusakalalu

Introduction

The SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) will soon become a SADC Parliament, but reference in texts and speeches to the Forum will persist. For example, the SADC Parliamentary Forum has established a Trust as one of its organs. The name of the Trust, at its establishment is the SADC Parliamentary Forum and its Successors’ Trust. This is a trademark name that will continue to include and perpetuate the name of the forum, and the Parliament is already provided for in the sub-phrase “its Successors”. This name is a trademark where the legal aspect of the name takes precedence over anything else. It will not at any point in time be called The SADC Parliament Trust. It is also unlikely that an acronym SADC PF will be used in it. In other words saying The SADC PF and its Successors’ Trust could not be acceptable as a name whether in writing or in speech. If one needs to shorten the long phrase in a context where it is clear that reference is made to this particular trust, all one will say is the word Trust.

What is an acronym?

Acronyms are abbreviated forms of compound words or whole phrases used by maintaining only the first letters of the words in those phrases. These abbreviated forms become words in their own right and they are first and foremost nouns. Unlike English where only some nouns and respective pronouns or possessives can be seen as masculine or feminine (he-she; him-her; his-her; boy-girl; man-woman; father-mother, etc.), in French and Portuguese, all nouns, including abstract nouns, collective nouns, etc., bear a grammatical gender. Thus the word community, which bears no particular gender in English, is feminine in both French and Portuguese, and the word forum, again with no particular gender in English, is masculine. How do we know the grammatical gender of such words? By the article that precedes these words within a noun phrase: la communauté-une communauté in French; a comunidade-uma comunidade in Portuguese, while we say le forum-un forum in French, and o fórum-um fórum in Portuguese. These grammatical facts are immutable and take precedence over whether any collective will be seen as a community or a forum, or whether the name of a community or forum will become a trademark or not.

Types of acronyms

There are three main types of acronyms to which others may be added. For the purpose of this reflection paper, let’s exemplify the 3 types: (i) proper acronyms, (ii) initialisms and (iii) reverse acronyms. 

The first type is what is called a proper acronym. In fact some definitions say that this is what acronym means; other types are called abbreviations, as a hyponym. A proper acronym is an acronym that sounds just like a word, i.e., you can easily count the number of syllables it contains. Thus SADC contains two syllables [sa-dec], UNICEF contains three syllables [u-ni-sef], UNESCO contains three syllables [u-nes-ko]. Now, quite a few people say [es-ei-di-si] to read out SADC. For those, SADC is not a proper acronym, but an initialism, the second type of acronyms, where every letter of the acronym is pronounced as a letter. SADC is not the only acronym that some people pronounce as a proper acronym and others as an initialism. Another acronym in this situation is VAT (for value-added tax), which some people pronounce as [vat], the vowel being the English central vowel between [a] and [e], which is found in words like bat, mat, pat, etc. So, when VAT is pronounced like that, it is a proper acronym with a single syllable. Other people, however, pronounce the acronym as an initialism [vi:-ei-ti:], pronouncing the name of every letter, turning it into a three-syllable word. 

The distinction between a proper acronym and an initialism is important because GDP (for gross domestic product), which is always an initialism in English, perhaps for having no vowel letter, is rendered in Portuguese as a proper acronym, PIB [pib], a one-syllable word, and the same sequence of letters in French becomes an initialism [pé-i:-bé]. In Portuguese, PIB stands for produto interno bruto, and in French produit intérieur brut.

 

How does the distinction between a proper acronym and an initialism relate to SADC PF? The first part, SADC, can be pronounced as a proper acronym, while the second part, PF, is always an initialism, maybe for not containing a vowel letter. This is what gives us [pi:-ef], the name of the letters P and F in English. Therefore, if SADC PF is a trademark name that cannot be translated in any way into a different form in French or Portuguese, while F is the same in the latter two languages, the P remains in English, i.e., [pi:] instead of [pé], the name of the letter in both French and Portuguese. If we say that this is not a big deal, let’s wait until we have an acronym like RWPC (Regional Women’s Parliamentary Caucus). It has been decided that, when we write, we maintain the initialism as it is. The question is, should the DRC and Madagascar be saying [er-double v-pé-sé]? (By the way the acronym DRC is an initialism). Should Angola and Mozambique be saying [er-dabl iu-pé-sé]? Many people would not understand why the Portuguese language does not have a name for the letter W, borrowing the English name [double u]. That’s because, prior to the 1990 new orthographic agreement, the Portuguese alphabet had only 23 letters instead of 26. The letters K, W and Y did not form part of the alphabet. This is why you will see some people still writing Botsuana and Zimbabué or Zimbâbue. Eswatini just came well after the adoption of the new spelling system, while Swaziland used to be written Suazilândia. The letters K and Y use the Greek names kappa and upsilon. Fortunately, this paper does not deal with any examples of acronyms with those letters.

 

The third type of acronyms, the reverse acronym, will not be dealt with, as no example applies to what is of direct interest to this paper. It is mainly a mnemotechnic attempt to come up with an acronym which sounds like a common noun or even an adjective or adverb that actually exists in a given language. For example, the Namibian Institute of Culinary Education forms the reverse acronym NICE, which is a school within the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST). This technique teaches institutions to be careful about the sound of an acronym representing their full name, as it may coincide with a word that may render obscene or insulting the name of a programme or institution. For example, it’s quite telling that, while NICE sounds nice, NUST, on the other hand, is not far from nasty, and students of the Namibia Institute of Science and Technology, especially those who fail to pass a study course may say, “No wonder I didn’t pass. The teaching staff at NUST are a nasty bunch”.

 

Unreadable or never read written acronyms 

The above-discussed example of RWPC illustrates a situation where a Portuguese acronym could have been coined, namely GRMP, for Grupo Regional da Mulher Parlamentar. After using this translated acronym in texts for some time, it was realised that neither Angola nor Mozambique actually pronounced the initialism. Moreover the Angolan NWPC (National Women’s Parliamentary Caucus) is called Grupo das Mulheres Parlamentares, while the Mozambican one is called Gabinete da Mulher Parlamentar. So, the G would have covered either the word Grupo or the word Gabinete. However, since nobody ever used the proposed acronym GRMP for the regional caucus, it was decided that it was better to keep RWPC in brackets, although nobody would say it. This applies also to the other committees whose acronyms are actually pronounced in English (DGHR, GEWAYD, TIFI, FANR [now FANRCA] and HSDSP. This last one has not been heard as an acronym. When people want to abbreviate the name of the Committee, they just say “The Special Programmes Committee” for the full name The Standing Committee on Social and Human Development and Special Programmes. This is to say, there are ways of abbreviating a full name, that do not necessarily resort to the use of acronyms, as suggested for Trust above. The Regional Parliamentary Model Law Oversight Committee (RPMLOC) is a funny type of acronym. Because it does not have an initialism part like PF and a proper acronym part like SADC, the pronunciation of the acronym omits the P and the acronym is pronounced [remloc]. For this reason, it was loosely decided that we might as well have a never-used, never-read-out acronym in brackets in Portuguese, namely CPRFLM for Comissão Parlamentar Regional de Fiscalização das Leis-Modelo. It is worth noting as well that, although nobody has ever thought about it, the last syllable of RPMLOC rhymes with the verb lock, an unhappy coincidence for a committee that is supposed to unlock the domestication of regional model laws.

 

Indeed, in English, there are a few acronyms that are never pronounced and are used in texts to reduce the number of words. English has a tendency to over-use acronyms, which is not quite the same in French or Portuguese. This is in part why most acronyms are coined in English. One of those acronyms, that is neither a proper acronym, an initialism or a reverse acronym, is MS for Member State(s). It is a single very short word that is used in the body of sentences (as opposed to in brackets), and nobody ever reads it out. When read out, the reader renders the acronym as Member State(s), its full form.

 

The points made above show that, if no-one ever says FP-SADC in Portuguese or French, it does not really matter. A better way of summarising SADC Parliamentary Forum is to say the Forum, as suggested for Trust. The word Trust (one syllable) is very short; so is the word Forum (a two-syllable word). This is what has been done, since reference to the Forum in context will suggest that the word cannot be confused with, for instance, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, also referred to as the Forum, although its full name doesn’t even carry the word Forum and whose French-coined name Conférence internationale sur la région des Grands Lacs gives us unreadable acronyms both in French (CIRGL) and English (ICGLR).

 

The grammatical gender of an acronym

The classic example usually given to illustrate the arbitrary nature of grammatical gender is the fact that the word tree is masculine in French (un arbre) and feminine in Portuguese (uma árvore). This shows that, in many cases, grammatical gender has little to do with the referent, i.e., what the words refer to. However, the morphology of certain words tends to relate them to a certain grammatical gender. The word communauté in French, as seen above, is feminine; so are most (if not all) abstract or collective nouns ending in -té: liberté, clarté, verité, charité, etc. In Portuguese, those correspond to words ending in -dade: comunidade, liberdade, claridade, verdade, caridade, etc. 

 

How about an acronym? How do we know that SADC is feminine for us to say la SADC, une SADC forte, unie et bien intégrée? Is it word-ending, like in the case of -té and -dade? SADC rhymes with cheque, which is masculine both in French and in Portuguese, and with bibliothèque, which is feminine in French. It can therefore be seen that SADC is not feminine because of its ending as a word. It is feminine because the headword of the phrase Southern Africa Development Community is the word community, which is feminine both in French and Portuguese. What is the headword of Southern Africa Development Community Parliamentary Forum? It is the word forum, which is masculine. Therefore, if the acronym SADC PF remains in the feminine either in French or Portuguese, this would amount to ignoring the masculine grammatical gender of its headword.

 

Having said that, it can be argued that sometimes rhyming words do influence grammatical gender. For example, UNDP (an initialism) has been translated by a proper acronym PNUD both in French and in Portuguese. Guess which word not denoting a UN agency this UNDP/PNUD translation could have influenced… the acronym COVID. When the acronym was coined, in both French and Portuguese, the idea was that it must be feminine because the D at the end stands for disease, which is translated as maladie in French, doença in Portuguese, which are feminine words in both languages. So, people said la COVID/a COVID. Later on, little by little, it started becoming acceptable to say le COVID/o COVID. One possible interpretation is its rhyming with PNUD, which is definitely masculine because the word programme/programa is the headword of the phrase Programme des Nations unies por le développement / Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento.

 

Before concluding, one interesting remark has to be made: the English-coined  initialism HIV retained its English form in Brazilian Portuguese, but is rendered as VIH in European Portuguese. Mozambique tends to use the Brazilian form, while Angola uses the form used in Portugal. However, both Brazilians and Mozambicans (when the Mozambicans use the English form, because this is not always the case) recognise that the word is masculine. The headword of vírus de imunodeficiência humana is the word vírus, which is masculine. The proper acronym AIDS retains its English form in Brazil, though the diphthong is pronounced in Portuguese [aidz] instead of [eidz], while the acronym is also translated as Sida/SIDA, putting first the letter that represents the headword syndrome/síndrome/sindroma. This also shows that varieties of the same language may have different forms of acronyms in use. 

 

Coming back to acronyms in the UN system, some retain the English-coined acronyms in French and Portuguese, like UNESCO and UNICEF. The headword of UNESCO is organisation, which is feminine, while UNICEF is a fund, which is masculine both in French and Portuguese. Other acronyms have been translated: UNFPA becomes FNUAP, WHO becomes OMS, WFP becomes PAM, UNHCR becomes ACNUR, etc. 

 

Meanwhile…

This conclusion-recommendation section is subtitled “meanwhile” as it does not prescribe what MUST be done. My own view is that, meanwhile, in writing (translation) we can continue, according to preferences, using la SADC PF (as machine-translation wants) or le FP-SADC in French, a SADC PF or o FP-SADC in Portuguese. In speech (during interpretation in the booth or by Parliamentarians on the meeting floor) we can say la SADC PF or le Forum in French, even when in writing what we are reading is the acronym SADC PF or FP-SADC. In Portuguese, we can also say a SADC PF, o FP-SADC or o Fórum. At the time this paper was written, the SADC PF secretariat had in its staff complement a few lawyers, namely Advocate Clare Musonda from Zambia (who likes French and Portuguese, though she is not so proficient in these two languages); Advocate Jeff Zulu, SRHR researcher from Zambia; Rachel Mundilu, regional staff from Namibia, who used to be the Manager for Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Climate Action, an accomplished lawyer; and Sheuneni Kurasha, Manager for Democratisation, Governance and Human Rights, as well as Gender Equality, Women Advancement and Youth Development, who was concluding his law degree. He is now the Director of Parliamentary Business and Programmes.. Let them initiate a proposal pushing us towards adopting a single position on this matter. Let us not be the tail wagging these lawyers in matters of legal nature and property rights like trademark or brand. It would even be more advisable if Parliamentarians from the DRC, Madagascar, Angola or Mozambique moved a motion in that direction without such being staff-initiated. Let them raise the concern about SADC PF as a trademark brand and the need to stay in one language, namely English, rather than being translated in one way or another. 

 

Further reading

Attila Imre (2022) “Categorizing and translating abbreviations and acronyms” Open Linguistics 2022; 8: 378–389

 

Barnett, Adrian, and Zoe Doubleday (2020) “The growth of acronyms in the scientific literature.” eLife 9, 1–10.