Monday, July 16, 2012

Whether to use Evite

Many people use Evite to send out invitations to their events. I've even used it in the past. However, with the advent of other online invitation options, I've stopped using Evite to a greater degree.

And having learned Spanish, I've also come to recognize that there is a linguistic problem with Evite, itself.

We all know that English - although the major language-of-use - isn't the only language used on the Internet. In 2010, the ten major languages used on the Internet were:

1. English (536.6 million)
2. [Written Han] Chinese (444.9 million)
3. Spanish (153.3 million)
4. Japanese (99.1 million)
5. Portuguese (82.5 million)
6. German (75.2 million)
7. Arabic (65.4 million)
8. French (59.8 million)
9. Russian (59.7 million)
10. Korean (39.4 million)

Why does this matter? Well, for the point that the Latin root of evitatio means to avoid, and all the modern-day Romance Languages utilize this Latin root. For example, to avoid translates variously as:

evitar in Catalan, Galacian, Portuguese, Spanish,
éviter in French,
evitare in Italian,
evita in Romanian,
eviti in Esperanto, and
evite in Hatian creole

Most (if not all) of these have the conjugation of evite, which means [he/she/you] avoid, either in the indicative or the imperative forms.

Therefore, Evite - while a somewhat catchy and witty portmanteau of the novel prefix of e- (referring to electronic) and the root word of invitation - was automatically limiting its implicit meaning to roughly 295.6 million people (using only the totals of Spanish, Portuguese, and French from the list above), or roughly 15% of the 2010 Internet using population.

Still, it doesn't help that the second automated option for a Google search of "evite" is "evite alternatives"...

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