Reply SIL Vous Plait

[SciFiRocker]

RSVP = Reply SIL Vous Plait...
Which is French for please.

RSVP means reply please.

Aibu that you DO NOT IGNORE A PARTY INVITATION!

(Rant over)

Second page. FFS.

Time for bed.

@MrsHathaway that was clearly a very polite English cough, rather than a dismissive Gallic shrug.

Ah that would have been a sneer and a wince and a very Gallic noise.

There was a time in history when French was quite widely used in the land we call England. This, combined with having been invaded by so many other countries over the centuries makes England (and probably a lesser extent Wales and Scotland) a distinctly mongrel society.
At least with a dismissive Gallic shrug the direction the conversation is going is clear.

Ifailed Thursday at 11:31
"Wouldn't it be easier to just write "please reply, stating if you are coming or not", rather than an acronym of a foreign phrase that is open to interpretation?"

But putting RSVP is so much more economical! I find it hard to believe that there are adults who don't know what it means. But, I guess it might be unknown in other languages, so anyone with English as a 2nd language might not be familiar with it. But surely, they would be unfamiliar with quite a lot of words and expressions and would simply look them up?

outabout Didn't the aristos in Scotland speak French for much longer than in England? Esp . Mary Q of Scots. ! Of course I wasn't there so I don't really know but I know that MQOS did because she was brought up in France.

@ppeatfruit
I didn't do history apart from what we did before 'O' levels, and there was less of it when I did that even! I think the Vikings were just leaving.
My point is however that English is a mish-mash of many languages and we happily adopted whatever was around.
Whatever, it is VERY rude and lazy not to reply to an invitation. With modern technology you don't even have to get paper and quills out!

I just had someone invite me to their party which is on the same day as ours, she hasn't RSVP'd to our invite which was sent 3 weeks ago (party is next week) and I know she has the invite to ours. Rude!

I have also just chased those that didn't reply and got some pissy replies back why not just reply in the first place?

Surely it is good manners to reply to all invitations, regardless of whether it says RSVP or not?

Direct translations are often virtually meaningless or at least bizarre. As everyone said, SVP just means please. Like por favor means please in English, not 'for favour'!

I thought everyone knew RSVP meant 'tell me whether you are coming or not'

outabout Yes of course it's rude not to reply to a RSVP invite! It does seem that more and more people don't reply to txts, or don't even acknowledge gifts

Direct translations are often virtually meaningless or at least bizarre.
Exactly

“Direct translations are often virtually meaningless or at least bizarre. As everyone said, SVP just means please. Like por favor means please in English, not 'for favour'!”

Was going to post exactly this. “Please” is a concept. The way people express it varies across the world. M As someone else said, in English “please” could be considered simply an extension of “pleas” - ‘I implore you’. And as above, the way the Spanish say it was originally ‘do it for me as a favour’.

I’m amazed that people think that “s’il vous plaît” means “if you want to”. Its literal translation may be “if it pleases you”, but its meaning In English is “please”.