‘Cam’ or ‘Cambs’: Speech communities in Cambridge, and strategies for apocope in British English

I wrote a baby linguistics paper because what else is one supposed to do when one has data? Content warning: using <orthographic>, /phonemic/ and [phonetic] transcriptions all in the same paragraph; I cite a supervision as well as Pearson Edexcel.

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Abstract

Students at the University of Cambridge are more likely to use ‘Cam’ as short for ‘Cambridge’, while residents of the city are more likely to use ‘Cambs’. An Instagram poll confirms this hypothesis. This article discusses how the Cam-Cambs divide reflects distinct speech communities in Cambridge, as well as theories on the origin of the form ‘Cambs’.

Introduction

The abbreviation of ‘Cambridge’ to ‘Cambs’ was ubiquitous when I lived in Cambridge before university. However, since starting university in Cambridge, I have been surprised by how fellow students only ever use ‘Cam’ on social media and when texting. I decided to find out if there is indeed a statistical association between whether or not one is student at the University and which shortened form one uses.

Method

An Instagram story poll was created (Figure 1), asking which abbreviation of ‘Cambridge’ people were more likely to use. Since I have a private Instagram, I am personally or vicariously connected to most of the people who can see my story. My Instagram followers mostly fall within 15 - 25 years of age, the modal age being 18 -19. I know most of them via either living and attending secondary education in Cambridge, or studying at the University of Cambridge.

Responses were counted at the end of 24 hours, and participants categorised into Residents and Students. For the purposes of this experiment, and taking into consideration the age range of participants, Residents are defined as people who have lived and/or been to school in Cambridge prior to university-age. Residents are more likely to be socially connected to others who reside in the city than to Students at the university. Students are defined as people who study at the University of Cambridge without having lived in Cambridge before their degree. Students are likely to have social connections with other Students than with Resident age-peers, most of whom attend university in other cities or no longer live in Cambridge. Participants who have both resided in Cambridge before university-age and then went on to study at the University of Cambridge qualify as Residents.

The hypothesis is that Residents are more likely to use ‘Cambs’ and Students ‘Cam’.

Data and analysis

After 24 hours, there were 262 responses to the poll, the results of which are summarised in Table 1.

There were 6 Residents who also happen to study at the University. Of these, 2 answered ‘Cam’ and 4 answered ‘Cambs’.

The data in Table 1 was tested for associations between the two variables, Resident vs Student and Cam vs Cambs, using a chi squared test in the format required by Edexcel (2017). The expected findings for where there is no association between the two variables is shown in Table 2.

The chi squared (χ^2) value was calculated using the formula ( ∑n (Oi−Ei)^2/Ei ), which was 122.73. At 1 degree of freedom and a 0.5% significance level, the critical value for χ^2 is 7.879, which our test statistic by far exceeds. Therefore the data in Table 1 supports the hypothesis that there is some association between the two variables, namely Resident vs Student and ‘Cam’ vs ‘Cambs’.

(I also tried to do single variable hypothesis tests like ‘in the set of Residents, are they disproportionately more likely to say ‘Cambs’’, but those gave me equally extreme results. This either means my data is great, or I’m doing it all wrong. I haven’t done maths in about nine months, so it could really go either way. If you still remember how to hypothesis test, please let me know if I have no clue what I’m doing.)

Discussion

Speech communities

The collected data supports the hypothesis that Residents are more likely to use ‘Cambs’ and Students ‘Cam’. This reflects the general social and linguistic separation between day-to-day inhabitants of the city and those who come to Cambridge for higher education, although they occupy the same geographical region and all use its associated resources. Thus the Cam-Cambs divide illustrates two distinct speech communities in Cambridge, those of residents and students. Speech communities are tied together by relative insularity of social interaction, and are evidenced by resulting similarities in linguistic practice. They also have the effect of stabilising and enforcing linguistic norms within them, through the constant interaction of its members (differing degrees of normative power are not strictly relevant here, though for a discussion see Milroy & Milroy, 1985). This is reflected in the small degree of overlap between Resident and Student social groups in Cambridge, and their maintenance of 'Cambs' and 'Cam' respectively as the shortened form for 'Cambridge'.

There is no ‘correct’ or ‘better’ abbreviation of ‘Cambridge’, nor is there necessarily a reason that Residents should prefer ‘Cambs’ and Students ‘Cam’, other than that it’s what their social groups say. It is true that the names of Cambridgeshire districts are often abbreviated to ‘Cambs’, such as ‘South Cambs’ for ‘South Cambridgeshire’, which is the district surrounding the city of Cambridge. Residents’ exposure to ‘Cambs’ as short for ‘Cambridgeshire’ may be influencing them to prefer ‘Cambs’ for ‘Cambridge’, simply because ‘Cambs’ is already familiar.

A few Residents expressed a preference for ‘Cam’ instead of ‘Cambs’. While this may be the effect of free variation, it is also possible that some of them see ‘Cambs’ as standing primarily for ‘Cambridgeshire’, so prefer ‘Cam’ for the city.

Different strategies of apocope in British English

The interference from ‘Cambs’ for ‘Cambridgeshire’ notwithstanding, ‘Cambs’ is still a valid shortening of ‘Cambridge’ in British English, just through a slightly different shortening process to ‘Cam’.

‘Cam’ exemplifies the approach of simple apocope, where the initial syllable(s) of a word are used as they are the word’s shortened form. Other examples of this process include ‘fam’ for ‘family’, ‘telly’ for ‘television’, and ‘Tom’ for ‘Thomas’.

‘Cambs’ is an example of z-shortening, where the shortened form is formed by attaching a [z̊] to a word’s initial syllable(s), or their modified form. The added sound is spelled with either <s> or <z>. Examples include ‘tomoz’ for ‘tomorrow’ and ‘soz’ for ‘sorry’. This approach is common with names, including ‘Babs’ for ‘Barbara’, ‘Tollers’ for ‘Tolkien’ (yes I’m a nerd; Glyer, 2016), and probably underlies forms like ‘Hazza’ for ‘Harry’ and ‘Rozza’ for ‘Rory’. It may be enforced by shortened word-forms where the retained syllable(s) naturally end in /z/, such as ‘fizz’ from ‘fizzy’ (as in ‘a bottle of fizz’), or ‘Jeez’ for ‘Jesus’.

Z-shortening may be a predominantly British shortening strategy, though there is insufficient evidence from my end. Poll participants from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, places all with local Englishes, have responded that they do not use z-shortening in their home dialects of English, though the sample size for this follow-up was too small to be meaningful. ‘Tomoz’ is attested in Australia, and ‘soz’ has been attributed to the internet (Urban Dictionary Contributors, n.d., a, b). I have no data from any other Englishes. Z-shortening may also be distinct - if related and/or analogous - to z- or s-diminutives, such as ‘Moms’ and ‘Pops’ to refer to one’s (singular) parents in the United States.

Research into what I have called z-shortening, or modern English diminutives in general, are severely lacking - if you find / do some please let me know.

(UPDATE 24 JAN. 2021: I found some research! - Shout out to Bert for sending me his co-authored book chapter that came out last month. I talked here about diminutives, but I think the word I was looking for is ‘hypocoristic’, which is like ‘diminutive’ but its affective connotations are less entrenched than ‘diminutive’. Hypocoristics in general, including ones with -s, are discussed by Kennedy and Zamuner (2006) in relation to baseball and ice hockey players. What I call z-shortening seems to be first linguistically described by Spradlin (2016). She calls it ‘totes truncation’, and also discusses other internet-associated shortenings such as forms ending in -sh (‘sesh’ for ‘session’) or combining the first element with the start of the second (‘awf’ for ‘awful’). To be honest a lot of her examples seem a bit kitsch to my 2020-21 British talks-quite-proper form of youth language, but it’s a cool paper and you should check it out.)

(Bert is my lecturer; the shoutout is a figure of speech.)

‘Cam’ is very apparently the more straightforward shortening, simply taking the initial syllable of ‘Cambridge’ without further manipulation. However, ‘Cambs’ may be phonetically more preferable as it preserves the syllable weight of the initial syllable in ‘Cambridge’, so may be regarded as more similar to that initial syllable. When said in isolation, ‘Cam’ /kæm/ (either short for ‘Cambridge’ or referring to the River Cam) always has a ‘short a’, although in ‘Cambridge’ /ˈkeɪm.bɹɪdʒ/ the corresponding vowel is a ‘long a’, i.e. diphthong /eɪ/. The vowel lengthening may be due to English’s tendency for lexical stress to coincide with long syllables (Tyler, 2020). /keɪm/ is a long syllable, with CVVC structure since diphthongs and long vowels are commonly regarded as twice the weight of short vowel V. ‘Cam’ /kæm/ is a short syllable with structure CVC, while ‘Cambs’ /kæmbs/ qualifies as a long syllable due to the consonant cluster /mbs/ in the coda. (The actual syllable structure of ‘Cambs’ is probably CVCC rather than CVCCC - ‘Cambs’ is unlikely to be realised as [kæmbs] in fluent speech, more likely [kæ̃bs] or [kæ̃ms]. We’re not sure which because no-one really ever says ‘Cambs’ aloud.)

The -b- in ‘Cambs’

The first syllable in ‘Cambridge’ is, morphologically speaking, ‘Cam’, yet the z-shortened form ‘Cambs’ rather than ‘Cams’. This may be due to a combination of some or all of the following reasons.

1. Articulatory effects. In 'Cams', the consonant cluster /ms/ requires a shift from the voiced bilabial nasal stop /m/ to the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, entailing among other things the release of the bilabial stop before a new stricture can be formed by the tongue at the alveolar ridge. In other words, saying ‘Cams’ fluently will include a /b/ anyway.

2. Reanalysis of /b/ into the first syllable. In ‘Cambridge’ /ˈkeɪm.bɹɪdʒ/, /b/ is morphologically part of the onset to the second syllable, but it may have been reanalysed as part of the coda to the first syllable (i.e. /ˈkeɪmb.ɹɪdʒ/). This is permitted by the relative sonorities of the string /mbɹ/, where /b/ can be grouped with either /m/ or /ɹ/, as it is less sonorous than both (McCulloch, Gawne, 2020). The greater phonetic similarity between /m/ and /b/, as they are homorganic, may aid in this reanalysis.

3. Orthographic distinctiveness. In English spelling, letters with ascenders (b, d, f etc) and descenders (g, j, p etc) are more visually distinctive. English words are read in chunks according to their visual shapes as well as phonetically according to the sound of each letter (Coulmas, 1989), so the placing of letters with ascenders and descenders are visually more helpful when reading at speed. Thus the retention of <b> in ‘Cambs’ may help the shortened form scan better as a variant of ‘Cambridge’, especially when the retention brings little extra phonetic encumbrance (see above).

4. Analogy with other words with word-final <mb>. Word-final <mb> is idiomatic in English, especially in single-syllable words, viz. ‘climb’, ‘crumb’, ‘lamb’, ‘comb’ etc, making ‘Camb’ appears viable as a standalone form. The final <s> is then attached as a suffix a là z-shortening.

Idiosyncratic usage of ‘Cam’ vs ‘Cambs’

Under the speech-communities framework of the study, ‘Cam’ and ‘Cambs’ have been presented as competing or parallel forms. This is indeed borne out by some of poll participants, who were so kind as to message me their thoughts. Some respondents expressed surprise, as they had never heard the alternate form before; a couple others expressed strong allegiances (Figure 2).

Yet others said they use the two interchangeably, and do not have a preference even if they had to pick one. These participants were all in the Student category.

One participant in the Student category commented that for them, ‘Cam’ signifies Cambridge, and ‘Cambs’ Cambridgeshire, just as in ‘South Cambs District’ mentioned above.

Another participant, categorised as Resident though they are also a student at Cambridge, said that for them ‘Cam’ signifies the University (e.g. ‘Cam is giving us Covid tests’), and ‘Cambs’ the city of Cambridge (e.g. ‘lmk when you’re in Cambs’). They also remark that this idiosyncratic distinction may be due to habitually referring to the city as ‘Cambs’ with other Resident friends, but seeing other Students use ‘Cam’ almost exclusively.

REFERENCES

Coulmas, F. (1989). The Writing systems of the world. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Edexcel. (2017). Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Further Mathematics (9FM0): Specification (Issue 2). London, UK: Pearson.

Glyer, D. P. (2016). Bandersnatch : C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the creative collaboration of the Inklings. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press.

Kennedy, R., & Zamuner, T. (2006). Nicknames and the lexicon of sports. American Speech, 81(4), 387–422. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2006-026

McCulloch, G., & Gawne, L. (2020, November 19). Climbing the sonority mountain from A to P [Podcast]. Retrieved from https://lingthusiasm.com/post/635258033226776576/lingthusiasm-episode-50-climbing-the

Milroy, J., & Milroy, L. (1985). Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics, 21(02), 339. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700010306

Spradlin, L. (2016). OMG the Word-final Alveopalatals are Cray-cray Prev(alent): The morphophonology of totes constructions in English. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 22(1). Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol22/iss1/30/

Tyler, M. (2020). Phonetics supervisions. In Li1: Sounds and words. University of Cambridge, UK: Linguistics Tripos.

Urban Dictionary Contributors. (n.d.-a). Urban Dictionary: soz. Retrieved January 3, 2021, from Urban Dictionary website: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=soz

Urban Dictionary Contributors. (n.d.-b). Urban Dictionary: tomoz. Retrieved January 3, 2021, from Urban Dictionary website: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tomoz

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