Chinese TLAs

English is full of TLAs, that is Three Letter Acronyms. These are just abbreviations for phrases that are too long. For example:

SOS    save our ship
SOB    son of a bitch
SOL    Shit out of Luck
LOL    laughing out loud

But of course abbreviations are not limited to 3 letters:

OZ            ounces
GIGO        garbage in garbage out
SNAFU     systems normal all fucked up

And science would be a slower moving field if we didn't have acronyms:

GFP            Green Fluorescent Protein
FRET          Forster Resonance Energy Transfer
HOMFLY    Hoste, Ocneanu, Millett, Freyd, Lickorish
                  and Yetter

But what happens in Chinese? You can't just pick out one part of a Chinese character and use that. What happens is that characters just get lost.

For example the my school's full name is: National Cheng Kung University, as an acronym NCKU. In characters:    國立成功大學 but usually people just say 成大.  Similarly, National Taiwan University, NTU, 國立臺灣大學 is usually called 臺大 . Of course with every abbreviation, the speaker and the listener have to be on the same page.

Florence and I use to work in the HsinChu Science and Technology Park, in characters: 新竹科學工業園區.
Not much Science or Technology would get done if we had to use the full title, so sometimes it's called HsinChu Science Park 新竹科學園 losing 3 characters. And if you're really in a hurry you can use just 2 characters:新科. Similarly, here in Tainan we have 臺南科學工業園區(Tainan Science and Technology Park), and it is called 南科. Of course speaker and listener have to be on the same wavelength.

Taiwan has a National Health Plan(which the US does not) the full name of the health insurance card is:
健康保險卡, but it is usually shortened to 健保卡. Of course, the speaker and listener have to be reading each other's mind.

For the beginner in Chinese, these abbreviations are a killer, because we're listening for the full phrase and think we got it wrong when it's shorter but new.

Here's a nice sign, I think the first 2 characters are a proper name but the last two characters are an abbreviation that I can't make out. I think it has something to do with music. Duh.