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Why, in English, do we say "spec[k]" as the abbreviation for "specification"?
Somebody said to me earlier that they were getting a "spess" for their new computer. It sounded really odd! But then, why do we say "spek" as the shortened form of "specification" when "spess" would be more logical? And why do we refer to somebody's "Merc[k]" as short for Mercedes when Mercedes has an "s" sound in the middle?
Is it because it's very slightly easier to say spek and Merk rather than spess and Merss?
1 Answer
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Because we generally pronounce a word ending in c with a k sound. It's similar when reading the word 'Celtic'. It is pronounced Keltic, but people often pronounce it as Seltic because our knowledge is that a c at the beginning of a word must have an s sound. This, however, was not the case in the early English language (c was pronounced as k before being palatalised to an s sound). See also how the c at the end of Celtic is pronounced with a k sound (similarly to spec)? We view spec as being a word on its own rather than an abbreviation and hence we say it like spek.