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Asked by chloefrancis14 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 18 Jun 2013.
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Kate Husband answered on 18 Jun 2013:
Astronomy is full of acronyms (for example USA is an acronym of United States of America). It can get quite annoying if you don’t know what they are but you soon learn them and start talking this way along with everyone else.
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Sam Geen answered on 18 Jun 2013:
Sure. I’ve been learning lots of French slang from living here – they like shortening words, so “manip” is short for “manipulation” (experiment), and “labo” is short for “laboratoire” (laboratory). They also have “verlan”, where they reverse words, like “keum” and “meuf” (mec and femme – mec is slang for man, and femme means woman). There are also Arab words, from people who came over from Algeria and other parts of North Africa. Things like “klebs” (dog) or “bled” (village).
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 18 Jun 2013:
All the time! Today I was using an EMP (electron microprobe) and tomorrow a SEM (scanning electron microscope). Usually scientists who work on the same subject have slang for all kinds of things, it’s a bit like writing things in text-speak because it takes less time. 🙂
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Robert Woolfson answered on 18 Jun 2013:
I use scientific slang all the time. I also tend to use a lot of day to day slang that I picked up while travelling. Can make meetings very entertaining when I forget what country I’m in and start talking in a completely different slang.
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Claire Lee answered on 19 Jun 2013:
Oh, absolutely! We don’t talk at all like the way textbooks are written – that would be exhausting!
I still use South African slang quite often without thinking and then get odd looks from all the Europeans. Like calling a traffic light a “robot”, they get really confused with that one.
No YOLO or swag though!
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