Abbreviation is the simplified form of some complex definitions or names of something. How does abbreviation come into being? The abbreviation chooses the representative morphemes or the words and cuts the full expression into simplified forms. As many people know, abbreviation simplifies the full expression and makes the communication much more convenient. There are three ways of abbreviation. We’ll introduce the specific ways in the following paragraphs.

Let’s introduce the first way of abbreviation. Let’s make an example first. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is called 中国人民解放军 in Chinese, but it can be called 解放军 by many people. This way of abbreviation is called the clipping abbreviation. The way cuts some certain part of the phrase and forms a new way of expression of the phrase. The abbreviation of the phrase indicates the same meaning to the full expressed phrase. For example, we can call Fudan University as 复旦大学, but we can call it as 复旦 as well.

Let’s move to the second way of abbreviation. The second way chooses some certain parts of a phrase and is called the segmentation abbreviation. The land reform 土地改革can be called 土改as well. The phrase extracts the word 土and 改to form the abbreviation. This way of abbreviation is to extract the main morpheme of the original phrase and combines the phrase again. Students taking online Chinese Lessons should know there are three patterns of this kind of abbreviation. The first pattern is the ABCD into AC. The phrase 邮政编码into 邮编 falls into the first pattern. The second pattern is the ABCD into AD. The phrase 空中小姐into 空姐 belongs to the second pattern. The third pattern is the ABCD into BD. The phrase 电影明星into 影星 conforms to such pattern.

The third way of abbreviation is to delete the same morphemes in the phrase. This way of abbreviation applies the method to delete the same parts of the phrase and remain the different parts of the phrase. In short, it remains the same morphemes as the common components. For example, the phrase 出境入境can be simplified as 出入境, 青年少年can be abbreviated into 青少年. When the foreign students learn Mandarin in the class, they should pay attention to this way of abbreviation. The fourth way of abbreviation is called the generalization of the phrases. For example, we can call 身体好、学习好、工作好as 三好 and 海军、陆军、空军as 三军.

To summarize, abbreviation represents the principles of economy, brevity and convenience in the communication process. It refers to the abbreviated phrases of the complex phrases.