Quote:
Of course, take a tip from a fellow writer and don't bother explaining anything at all. Think about all the things that would have been considered science fiction 2000 years ago (assuming they had scifi, that is): Cars, Planes, Guns, Computers, Phones, Movies, CDs, DVDs, etc. Now, pretend you have a basic understanding of English but have never heard of any of the above. Is there anything about them that suggests what they are?
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Car = Auto-mobile = "Thing that moves itself"
Comput-er = "Thing which does math"
DVD = Digital Video Disk = "technobabbled, (moving pictures/technobabble) on round, flat thing"
Tele-phone = "over-a-distance, and phon, meaning Sound; voice; speech."
Hrm... the "understandability" of the names might just be more closely related to the age of the technology relative to the plot's "now", rather than the age of the reader relative to the plot's "now".
At least in english.
When something new comes out, it gets a name that explains its purpose. After a couple years, long names like to collapse into acronyms. And after more years, the names get slanged-down into a syllable or two with no explanatory effect at all.