Word of the Week

When you abbreviate a pair or group of words in English, you tend to take the first letter of each word. Germans, however, take the entire first syllable of each word. That can lead to entire new and sometimes unusual sounding words.

Germans have tons of these kinds of terms, especially for things they come across regularly. For business people, a Telko - short for Telefonkonferenz, or telephone conference - can be a daily affair. Why waste precious time writing the whole thing out, when Telko is so much simpler? Whether or not Telkos themselves are a waste of time... We'll leave that up to you.