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why ess- a - pee not sap

Former Member
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why we have to pronaunce S A P instead of simple sap ???

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Answers (4)

Answers (4)

Former Member
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Hi,

I call the company ess a pee and the software sap, however I have no rational explanation as to why I do this.

Regards,

Nick

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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I used to pronounced S A P because I think it's the correct way...However in Peru almost everyone called it SAP....My former boss told me once....

You know why they want us to pronounce S A P instead of SAP...Because it's a marketing trick...

Didn't understand when he told...And of course I didn't understand it right now...

People use SAP just because the can...Try to pronounce IBM instead of I B M...Kinda hard right? -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

stephenjohannes
Active Contributor
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Blag,

I would seriously disagree with you in regards to the US market and US english. In midwestern american english, SAP has a severe negative connotation. It is considered an insult if someone calls you a "sap". It is partially marketing because otherwise they would have never sold any seats to US businesses if they went in as "sap" software.

It was always funny to see the reaction of friends and family when I told them that I worked with software called S A P or sap.

Take care,

Stephen

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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I would seriously disagree with you in regards to the US market and US english.

Sure, that can be true in US...But in other countries where SAP doesn't mean anything...I don't see it as a marketing trick.... -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

JPReyes
Active Contributor
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Agree with Olivier SAP is an acronym and the right way to say SAP is S.A.P. same as I.B.M. or R.E.M. (hehehe....)

Juan

matt
Active Contributor
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>

> Agree with Olivier SAP is an acronym and the right way to say SAP is S.A.P. same as I.B.M. or R.E.M. (hehehe....)

>

And Laser and NATO?

stephenjohannes
Active Contributor
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If you live in the United States then it is obvious why it is S A P instead of sap. In the US sap is considered a derogatory term. Basically the root comes from tree sap (i.e. maple syrup), and evolved to mean something different. If someone calls you a sap, that means you are foolish or easily taken advantage of.

Thus the first part of any SAP training class in the united states is learning to call it S A P instead of sap. Next step is an introduction to the german language(just kidding).

Take care,

Stephen

thomas_jung
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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Slightly off topic (but that is what the coffee corner is for - right), I had a funny run in with the name SAP once. I was at the big spring conference ASUG (Americas' SAP User Group) meeting a few years back. Of course the entire hotel was filled with people walking around with SAP on shirts and name badges.

I was in the elevator one morning and the young lady next to me asked me what this sap (pronounced all ran together) user group thing was. She had seen it all over the place. With the most serious face I could muster I began to explain to her how we were all professional maple syrup gathers (IE. In US English sap = the sticky stuff from a tree used to make syrup).

She was shocked to learn that so many people were "into that sort of thing". Well I was in it deep by this point. I went on to describe how we had educational sessions and panel discussions on the best approaches to collecting sap, how to avoid bears, how not to get lost in the forest, etc. I left the elevator never revealing the actual truth of what SAP was.

In my defense I was an SAP customer then and not an employee. Just don't ever tell anyone in SAP marketing what I did.

former_member110461
Active Contributor
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teee heee hee. That made me giggle.

Paul

former_member583013
Active Contributor
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Tom! You're funnier than I tought -:D Your story really made my day -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

RichHeilman
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate
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@Thomas Jung, that is really funny, and while reading it, I was thinking, he must have been a customer at the time, cuz he wouldn't have done that now.

Anyway, my two cents on the subject. I don't know if I had a discussion with someone about it, or if I read it somewhere, or if I simply made it up on my own, but I believe that then only time that you are supposed to say it as "sap" is when it is part of a bigger word, for examle, SAPscript, or SAPphire, or SAPconsole. Otherwise the correct way to say it is S A P

Regards,

Rich Heilman

ThomasZloch
Active Contributor
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I remember reading in a book that in 1992/93 Hasso, Dietmar and them were actually aware of the meaning of "sap" in the US, however still decided to market R/3 under the original name. Didn't hurt the sales, obviously.

I say "sap" when I feel lazy, "S.A.P." otherwise. So, "sap" most of the times.

Sapperlot.

marilyn_pratt
Active Contributor
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Don't know Rich, maybe you read it a few posts above

Just kidding.

S.A.P. That was what we ABAP instructors were instructed to repeat to our classes while telling them it would be the first interview question they would need to answer, so maybe you learned it in the classroom training from SAP education consultants.

I had an instructor and mentor in SAP that made everyone practice saying ABAP when they walked into their BASIS training classes the first day. He would say, "what do you do when you go to the throat doctor, do it now: Say ah...then say BAP." "Repeat after me class: ah bap , now ahbap." Why this made everyone giggle we weren't quite sure. But someone invariably persisted in mispronouncing the name. He said proper ABAP diction was as important as proper use of the FIELD-SYMBOLS and the TYPE statement.

It used to drive him nuts when people said A-BAP

My dad's response when I brought him a cap that said SAP, "Heck, I'm not wearing anything with a label that says I'm a pushover". Well my dad was a kind, good, man and he wound up wearing that hat anyway.

So A-BAP or ABAP ,S.A.P or sap, One of my students summed it up well when she wrote on her name card first day of class: SAP-resistance is futile .

Former Member
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Much before entering into SAP world, i heard sap is referred to an animal in some language so it is pronounced as S A P. I really dont know if it is right/wrong.

Neither could my instructor give a valid reason during my S A P tranining and it still remains a mystery

However in one of our Indian languages(Hindi) snake is called saap(pronounced sap).

~Eswar

former_member374
Active Contributor
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Hi Thomas,

At least you didn't say: Hit the floor.

A real crack up - must read to the bottom.

For anyone who hasn't already seen David Letterman's take on this: This is a True Story...

On a recent weekend in Atlantic City, a woman won a bucketful of quarters at a slot machine. She took a break from the slots for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room.

But first she wanted to stash the quarters in her room. "I'll be right back and we'll go to eat," she told her husband and she carried the coin-laden bucket to the elevator. As she was about to walk into the elevator she noticed two men already aboard. Both were black. One of them was big..very big... an intimidating figure. The woman froze. Her first thought was: These two are going to rob me.

Her next thought was: Don't be a bigot; they look like perfectly nice gentlemen. But racial stereotypes are powerful, and fear immobilized her. She stood and stared at the two men. She felt anxious, flustered and ashamed. She hoped they didn't read her mind . Surely they knew her hesitation about joining them the elevator was all too obvious. Her face was flushed. She couldn't just stand there, so with a mighty effort of will she picked up one foot and stepped forward and followed with the other foot and was on the elevator.

Avoiding eye contact, she turned around stiffly and faced the elevator doors as they closed. A second passed, and then another second, and then another. Her fear increased! The elevator didn't move. Panic consumed her. My God, she thought, I'm trapped and about to be robbed! Her heart plummeted. Perspiration poured from every pore.

Then ... One of the men said, "Hit the floor.

Instinct told her: Do what they tell you. The bucket of quarters flew upwards as she threw out her arms and collapsed on the elevator carpet. A shower of coins rained down on her. Take my money and spare me, she prayed. More seconds passed. She heard one of the men say politely,

"Ma'am, if you'll just tell us what floor you're going to, we'll push the button." The one who said it had a little trouble getting the words out. He was trying mightily to hold in a belly laugh. She lifted her head and looked up at the two men. They reached down to help her up.

Confused, she struggled to her feet. "When I told my man here to hit the floor," said the average sized one, "I meant that he should hit the elevator button for our floor. I didn't mean for you to hit the floor, ma'am." He spoke genially. He bit his lip. It was obvious he was having a hard time not laughing.

She thought: My God, what a spectacle I've made of myself.

She was too humiliated to speak. She wanted to blurt out an apology, but words failed her. How do you apologize to two perfectly respectable gentlemen for behaving as though they were going to rob you?

She didn't know what to say. The 3 of them gathered up the hundred dollar bill.

The card said: "Thanks for the best laugh we've had in years."

It was signed,

Eddie Murphy & Michael Jordan

It is of course only an urban legend. The funny thing is, that when Eddy Murphy swears that it isn't true, he gets as a responds. "Yes it is, my cousin was there!"

Best, Mark.

matt
Active Contributor
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I remember back in the late 90's there was the cover of Freelance Informer magazine, that had a picture of a group of people licking trees. The caption read "Some people will do anything to claim they have SAP experience".

matt

marilyn_pratt
Active Contributor
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LOL .Too bad more of them aren't hugging them, the trees I mean

Former Member
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Hi,

Because S.A.P is an acronym.

matt
Active Contributor
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I use both pronunciations. There's no law saying we have to pronounce it as S.A.P. You can pronounce it FUD if you want. Acronyms can be pronounced either as initialisms or as words, and still be acronyms.

I think it is cultural thing. In the UK we used to say for DASD - DAS-DEE, and for CICS - Kicks. But the US was always just using the initials. I think the UK way is better. Because then "Systems Programmers do it for CICS" makes sense. And anyway - who ever says L-A-S-E-R or N-A-T-O etc.?

matt

JanStallkamp
Employee
Employee
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>

> Because S.A.P is an acronym.

Just to prove my nitpicking attitude (spent too much time with the debugger the last days): SAP is not an acronym but it has been one. When SAP was founded it stood for "Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung" (system analysis and program development). Later it was changed to "Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung" (systems, applications and products in data processing). But since 2005 SAP's official name is just "SAP AG". The AG is the german acronym for "Aktiengesellschaft" that means that the company is stock based.

No guarantee for every detail, unfortunately I was not one of the guys who invented the original name in the early 1970th.

Regards,

Jan

marilyn_pratt
Active Contributor
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Nit-picking is part of the cultural DNA? LOL

I'm not from Walldorf but I'll nit-pick further:

We say must say SAPscript (the old relic) and (we often say) SAPlink (the new cool community code sharing) while not forcing the separate acronym pronunciation and we even say SAPphire with a "soft f" instead of P .... But we do say the S.A.P. Developer Network

Former Member
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SAP is an Initialism rather.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acronyms_and_initialisms:_A

Initialisms is where you spell out the alphabets like SAP, CD etc

Abbreviations is where the word is shortened but you say out the whole word: e.g abbr, etc.

Acronyms are where you pronounce a set of alphabets shortened from its original as a word e.g. LASER, NATO

And sap (when u dont say es-ay-pee) refers to tree sap and is also a military term.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapping

Also see [The Madras Sappers estd. 1780|http://www.madrassprsassociation.org/]

Former Member
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Hi,

Thanks, I learned a new English word "Initialism".

Well it seems that the word "SAP" may be an initialism as well as an acronym depending from the people and even depending from the context for each speaker...

Greetings,

Olivier

former_member110461
Active Contributor
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Thanks, I learned a new English word "Initialism".

I obviously wasn't educated very well - I'm English and I didn't know that was a real word.

How about SAPism

ThomasZloch
Active Contributor
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too much "ismism" going on here.

ok ok, not my invention, it's a Godley & Creme album title...

Former Member
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Got to agree with Paul, I've never come across Initialism before.

Despite what Wikipedia might say, something like SAP, NATO or LSD would be called either an acronym or abbreviation in English (UK). There're probably some rules as to the difference between an acronym and an abbreviation, but I don't think I was at school that day.

Regards,

Nick

stephenjohannes
Active Contributor
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Nick,

I would concurr that initialism sounds something like a word madeup by our fine president here in the US. Even in American Midwestern English you would use acronym to describe it.

For those not familiar with regional dialects/accents of American English, the midwestern accent/dialect is the "standard" for broadcast journalism in the United States.

Take care,

Stephen

Former Member
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> I would concurr that initialism sounds something like a word madeup by our fine president here in the US.

LOLLLLLLLZZZZ (at stephen being sarcastic)

And thanks for the info about the standard dialect for jounalism in the US.

But the thing about English, it grew over the years into something quite different compare to other european languages. It borrowed words from other languages, other languages on the other hand borrowed some of english.

e.g Jungle, Loot and Avatar are borrowed from Hindi.