The meaning is somewhat lost...

One of the few clear memories I have from when I was really young was reading an invitation and noticing that they begin with "You are cordially invited to so-and-so's event" and ending with "Please RSVP by x-date". And I've always taken RSVP to mean, "please reply" (sometimes it's RSVP ASAP which amused me a lot, I don't know why).

And so it does. Répondez S'il Vous Plaît is French for "please respond".

Like people pronouncing extraordinary as extra-ordinary (I suspect it's done in ads just to emphasise the extra), taking RSVP to mean "please respond only if you are attending" somewhat irritates me. Maybe because my teacher ingrained in us that not replying to an RSVP request even if it's a no is considered rude.

Technically, that makes me rude because sometimes I don't respond at all to invitations. Bite me =p

I want to grumble about how some people pronounce vitamins as veet-ah-mins (and other such words that do not come to mind now) and how I have a internal struggle in my mind from wanting to correct them but hey, even I can't pronounce three correctly. The-ree...tree...hmm

PS: This post was brought on by an email from a college I attended that asked me to RSVP to an invitation to visit their campus. I was going to RSVP "no" but the only option was to say "Yes, I'm attending!". I get why they only want to bother with those who can attend but yeesh, it's like this nail that needs to be filed till it's smooth.