That Big Speech this week is referred to by many media outlets as the SONA. In the Sunday Times style guide, however, it is the Sona, because it is an acronym and not an abbreviation.
I have mentioned the difference between acronyms and abbreviations in this column before, but here’s a brief refresher: if the first letters of an abbreviated phrase do not form a word that can be said, they are capitalised and pronounced as letters. An example is “FBI” — no-one says “Fibby”.
An acronym is an abbreviation in which the first letters of the phrase are sayable as a word, as in Dirco, Nasa and Sona.
However, when an acronym is identical to a real word that already exists, it is capitalised, as in the case of the South African Large Telescope (SALT).
Sona is Sona because there is no such word as Sona. If it stood for “state of the nation address to the republic” it might be “Sonar”, in which case it would be written as SONAR, because sonar pre-exists as a word for devices that use sound to find stuff underwater.
It is tautologous to say 'Sona speech' or 'Sona address', because Sona already stands for 'state of the nation address' so you’re just repeating yourself by saying 'state of the nation address address'
Incidentally, it is tautologous to say “Sona speech” or “Sona address”, because Sona already stands for “state of the nation address” so you’re just repeating yourself by saying “state of the nation address address”. (The same is true of people who say “PIN number” — personal identification number number — or “ID document” — identity document document.)
Enough of repetition, let’s get back to sonar, which became a lower-case word in dictionaries in about the 1940s, but also started life as an acronym. “Sonar” was cadged from the first letters of “sound navigation ranging”. The same happened with radar, also now a mere word, which was originally an acronym gleaned from “radio detection and ranging”.
Since 1950, radar has also had a figurative use, as in “that guy is on my radar”. Neither sonar nor Sona have as yet lent themselves to slang, though “get off my Sona” might have been an appropriate phrase for the president to use when a brawl was begun by insalubrious types who had to be forcibly ejected.
Incidentally, though they are rarely seen, “sonate” and “sone” are also recognised words. The first means to make a noise and the second is a unit of sound. Both could have been employed by imaginative writers to describe the levels of disruption at Thursday’s Sona.
In a recent article for the TechHistorian website, science writer Tobias Holm tracks the history of sonar, which, before it got its name, was first used by the ahead-of-his-time Leonardo da Vinci. In 1490, according to Holm, the polymathic artist placed a tube in the water and discovered that this enabled him to hear approaching vessels when he placed his ear to the tube.
A fellow pedant, Holm writes about errors involving abbreviations and acronyms in the development of sonar technology. Of research undertaken by the US, UK and France in 1916, he says: “The project was very hush-hush, so much so that the British Admiralty lied directly to the public in an interview with the Oxford English Dictionary about the project, claiming that the project acronym ASDIC was short for Allied Submarine Detection Investigation. In reality, the project was actually called the Anti-Submarine Division and was a direct response to the need to detect submarines more effectively after the devastating military prowess of the German U-boat.”
It took a while for Da Vinci’s sonar to become proper sonar. Holm writes: “The principle behind sonar has been known for centuries, but it wasn’t until tragedy struck that the need for an apparatus to detect underwater objects became apparent. Two major concerns, the risk of iceberg collisions and the threat of the U-boat, contributed to the development of passive sonar systems that were able to detect objects at range underwater.”
Disaster is often the motivator for useful progress, which should be of some comfort to South Africans, though many feel that this week’s Sona needed underwater apparatus to be heard and understood. I say what we really need is radar to warn us of approaching potholes.
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