Distros and convos

The Japanese shorten long English loanwords by the simplest of expedients—simply chopping off the last half of the word. So “convenience” becomes “conveni”. That always seemed kind of crude to me, albeit cute in a way.

But now I’ve noticed a trend in English to do the same thing (instead of, or in addition to, the old acronym approach). Two recent examples are the teen-age “convo”, for “conversation”, and the geekian “distro”, for “distribution” as in a Linux distribution. And of course there’s the old stand-by “combo”, corresponding to the Japanese “kombi”.

Why is it that in English we tend to want to end these words with an “o” sound?

Any more examples out there?

One Response to “Distros and convos”

  1. jafer Says:

    hai plz send me grameer and spoken englis notes plz help me

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