If you ask me, not that anyone ever has, "ie" and "eg" are only abbreviations for Latin in a strictly etymological sense.

Having thus inaugurated the study of the phenomenon of Lexified Abbreviates, I will add that Swedish "bh" (pronounced "behå" like the letters) meaning "bra" (itself an LA, as I shall now call them - how many "teen"s know that this is short for something, never mind what? ) is derived from "bysthållare", but the latter is effectively defunct.

Also the Dutch tourist board is called "VVV" and my Dutch tutor (-book) insisted that nobody has the least idea what it stands for. And quite right too.

> (in English, "eye ee" and "ee gee" or "that is" and "for example")

The prescriptivist in me jumps up to assert that "eye ee" and "ee gee" are not proper in spoken English. Similarly that "viz." should always be pronounced, "namely".

And here's an interesting question: why is "etc." pronounced "etcetera" instead of "and so forth"?

When it's not pronounced "ekt," that is. That is an interesting question. Possibly because there isn't one clear English realization; you could say "and so forth," "and so on," "and the like," &c &c. But why does everyone know the Latin when nobody knows it for ie and eg?

The correct pronunciation of etc. is exetra. Also, i.e. means "for example," and e.g. means "that is," (there really is no difference anyway.).

Sorry, pet peeves ;) (exetra does happen to be a real Latin word though...)

exetra does happen to be a real Latin word though

It's not in LSJ or the Oxford dictionary; what does it mean?

I assume that you, Mr. Hat, or someone in your circle of a prescriptivist bent has already posted/muttered under the breath/screamed at the walls about the fact the many folks these days seem to use "i.e." for "e.g." But never vice versa, at least not that I've noticed.

Do you pronounce & as "and" or as "et"? I've seen it written &cet.

Zackary: I try to adopt an attitude of resigned acceptance, bearing in mind that people cannot be expected to be consistent in their usage of what is, after all, a foreign and opaque formula. But sometimes I scream at the walls (quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbors).

Jonathan: I say "etcetera" for &c but "and" for & -- except in proofreading aloud, where the convention is to say "et" (a convention that greatly pleases me, though not as much as "bang" for !).

My pronunciation of "viz." has always been "to wit."

Lately I've been trying to rid my prose of all of these, though. Not out of any notion of linguistic purity -- English's purity will always have to be of "the heart of gold" kind, not the virginal kind -- but because I think those little abbreviations are ugly on the page.

Sorry, try excetra .

Aha: 'a water snake; a spiteful or malignant woman.' You know, if you'd use the restored pronunciation, we wouldn't have these problems.

But the French use "et cetera" every now and then, don't they? (I have also come across "et cétéra.) This lovely latinism was once common in well-mannered Russian writing. I don't know whether it was to be pronounced the Russian-Latin way (эт цЭтэра) or the French way, but this bit from Pushkin's Граф Нулин suggests the latter:

Себя казать, как чудный зверь,
В Петрополь едет он теперь
С запасом фраков и жилетов,
Шляп, вееров, плащей, корсетов,
Булавок, запонок, лорнетов,
Цветных платков, чулков à jour,
С ужасной книжкою Гизота,
С тетрадью злых карикатур,
С романом новым Вальтер-Скотта,
С bon-mots парижского двора,
С последней песней Беранжера,
С мотивами Россини, Пера,
Et cetera, et cetera.

By now, all the handy Latin expressions have fallen into disuse and sound eccentric in modern writing. Thus, Russian has и т.д. instead of "et cetera" (и т.д. и т.п. = and so on, and so forth); напр. instead of e.g., там же instead of ibid., те же instead of id., т.е. instead of "id est", and so on.

I would support the legalization of м.б. for может быть (perhaps, maybe). Suprisingly, бюстгальтер did not degenerate into БГ (the initials of a cult Russian songwriter/performer, by which he is known). I've always enjoyed the parallel between "büstenhalter" and "stadthalter", or, since I have William of Orange in mind, "bustenhouder" and "stadhouder".

A bravura comment, leaping from bras to Boris Grebenshchikov to William of Orange in a single bound. Molodets!

You know, if you'd use the restored pronunciation, we wouldn't have these problems.

On the contrary, I do use restored pronunciation, and that's exactly why I keep spelling that word wrong- the word play I'm trying to make doesn't really work unless you use the traditional English pronunciation, or drop the c. But I've really got to stop misspelling that, since I often bring it up to nipick others ;)

Does "restored pronunciation" mean "exketera"?

(that is to say, "exketra")?

It does indeed.

The correct pronunciation of etc. is et cetera, not eksetera. These are likely the same idiots that mispronounce asterisk (asteriks) and espresso (expresso).

On a different subject, when did people start misspelling definitely "definately"? The dumbing-down of the world continues.

It's not dumbing-down, although that does occur. Dialects and language as a whole progress and evolve in order to reflect the times. If it didn't, speakith like this thou art would.

I'm french guy, and looking for some explanation about 'i.e.' and 'e.g.' I see everywhere those times, I found this page. And now I'd like say a few things :
- i.e. and e.g. are not french at all, though we can see them popping around in many scientific texts and reports, because both the writers and the audience may be non-native french speakers, and do not know about 'cad' and 'p.ex.'. Languagehat is absolutely right on this point
- we do not use 'etc' every now and then (it's mainly used in politics when you want to describe something that does not exist, and hence you give one example and say 'etc' because you cannot actually find more)
- in french -I don't know about the other languages- 'etc' is pronounced 'eksetera', which we could call 'dyslexie' (I cannot find english for this :), but has been so deeply engraved in our minds that it's THE way it should be pronounced (try to say 'et caetera', with the correct latin pronounciation, and everybody will laugh at you)

Hi, tibo! Thanks very much for your comment; that information about how people actually pronounce "etc" is exactly the kind of thing you don't get from dictionaries.