"RSV"

[Mark A Mandel]

>From a meeting announcement at U of Penn:

> Afterwards we will be taking him for dinner at [name of restaurant].
> Please RSV if at all possible, but in any event feel welcome to join
> us.

Apparently the writer of this announcement (not a native speaker of
English, by the way, or French for that matter) interpreted "RSVP" as
"Respond x x Possible", with "x x" ~= 'if'.

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania