SDG, ECOSOC, P5+1: Seeking meaning in the UN’s coded lingo

By SARAH DiLORENZO
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations has its own language. For the dignitaries, bureaucrats, journalists and officials who walk these halls regularly, this alphanumeric soup has meaning and perhaps even facilitates communication. But during the handful of days every year when scores of world leaders descend on the U.N. campus in New York, so, too, do many people unfamiliar with these semantic shortcuts. To these visitors, it can sometimes seem that language is being used to obscure meaning rather than elucidate it.