Sometimes I have to go looking for some sort of linguistic phenomenon to discuss, but other days, they seem to just fall into my lap. In this case, it fell into my inbox, in a mail from one of the school administrators:

…information about a new course…

This will not show up on the web until about the middle of next week, but is for your FYI.

FYI: An explanation of FYI

For those you unfamiliar with the English acronym, “FYI” stands for “For your information”. Generally, it’s just used to indicate that a message or bit of info is relevant to somebody. It started in the corporate world, but seems to have spread from there into everyday use. Here are a few usage examples from the EnronSent corpus:

enronsent27:28740:I received this today. FYI and follow-up if you’re interested.
enronsent42:12:4. FYI - Entities which have an asterik(*) are qualified in foreign jurisdictions and may, according to statute, need to file amended Certificates of Authority to reflect that they are now Manager managed.
enronsent43:24017:Thanks for the reminder. Just an FYI - it is not babysitting when it is your own kids. (Just kidding - wanting to share a pet peeve of my sister’s.)

Generally, it’s used in one of three ways. Sometimes, it’s used simply as an abbreviation, standing in for the full phrase, as in the first example above.

Other times, you’ll have an “FYI - ….information…” construction. Here, FYI (as a whole) means “The reason I’m sending this your way is because you probably want to know this”. See the second example.

Finally, FYI has become a noun for some people. You’ll get things like “This is just an FYI, but…” when somebody is trying to politely let somebody know of a hole in their knowledge of a situation. “An FYI” is a polite reminder or tidbit of information somebody might find useful.

However, I’ve never seen anybody say “For your FYI” before.

For your FYI? Call the department of redundancy department

“For your FYI” is a very interesting construction. I sincerely doubt that she was intending to say “for your for your information”, and I doubt that she was intending to say that the information was intended for our tidbit of information.

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t an isolated incident. A simple google search for “for your FYI” brought up several different sites containing the phrase (here, here and here), and even a CD titled “For your FYI”. On the site for the CD, there’s even a remark about the strangeness (and origin) of the title:

Exit 245’s second CD “For Your FYI” was released in 2001. The CD got it’s title from an email from current member Jason Robey who sent an email letting the group know “For their FYI” about an upcoming concert. The inside joke made it as the CD title and the disc features 15 songs a hidden track.

So, I’m not the only person who finds it strange.

Don’t worry, if you use it, I won’t call the Federal FBI

What’s happening here? Well, truthfully, I’m not sure.

One theory would be that people are forgetting (or ignoring) what people actually mean by “FYI”. Perhaps it is no longer viewed by this person as meaning “For your information”. Instead, it seems to have become an amorphous sort of word referring to “useful information”. Thus, what she really meant to say was “For your useful information”. Not terribly far from where we started, I know, but language works in mysterious ways.

I might be willing to chalk this up to linguistic randomness if “for your FYI” were the only case. However, this seems to be a trend. I found several google hits for “federal FBI” (federal federal bureau of investigation), and a handful for “hd drive” (hard drive drive). The people at PC Computer Notes (personal computer computer notes) might well be able to tell us something about this phenomenon, and it might be worthwhile to ask the next person you see discussing their “SUV vehicle” (sport utility vehicle vehicle). There might even be some posts made on language related web blogs (web web-logs) about it.

If you’ve got any ideas of what the linguistic explanation might be, I’d love to hear it As I said, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here. I just know that it’s happening, and it’s interesting to watch.

The moral of this story: keep your eyes open, you never know what sorts of interesting language you’ll find, even places as boring as your electronic email.

I’d like to propose a new word in today’s post, one that I think would greatly benefit the language-loving populace: Hybridiom

This word was born only yesterday as I noticed this post on a support forum that I read frequently:

… Piffle! Forgive me my cynicism but this lack of support thing is really getting on my goat!

When I read this, I burst out laughing. This poster has merged two English idioms, combining “to get my goat” and “to get on my nerves”, into “getting on my goat”. So, instead of either of two parent idioms, we get a cross between the two, a “hybridiom”, if you will.

Now, in this case, it is a somewhat understandable error, as both of the original idioms have a similar meaning (to annoy somebody) and they both begin with the verb “get”. Interestingly, though, the meaning is completely lost when the two are merged. “To get on my goat” would literally refer to the act of climbing up onto my goat. If we were to merge them in the opposite fashion, it still wouldn’t make sense. “To get my nerves” wouldn’t really mean anything in that context (unless it’s physically removing the poster’s nerve cells).

These hybridioms aren’t unheard of elsewhere in the world, and they don’t necessarily need to be idioms at all. In the movie Boondock Saints, there’s a running joke at one point after a bartender (suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome) mixes up two proverbs. Here’s a transcript:

Bartender: So you guys keep your traps shut. ya know what they say; People in glass houses sink ships.
Rocco: Y’know Doc, I gotta get you a, a, like a proverb book or something. This mix and match shit’s gotta go.
Connor: (Imitating the Bartender) A p-penny saved is worth two in the bush.
Murphy: Don’t c-cross the road if ya can’t get out of the kitchen.
(…)
Bartender: Why don’t you make like a tree and get the fuck outta here!

Here, the Hybridioms are flying fast and furious. We have mixing of a number of different expressions, and (with the possible exception of the last one), the meaning is destroyed in the final form, unless you know the two expressions being mixed.

What’s interesting in this example is that the parent proverbs were related only peripherally. Take the first example. “Loose lips sink ships” refers to a wartime saying explaining that careless talk can easily be costly to the troops. “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” isn’t so much of an idiom as a proverb, basically stating that if you’re vulnerable, don’t start trouble. When merged, the result carries no meaning in and of itself.

So, have you heard any good hybridioms or hybrid proverbs? Do you enjoy merging idioms, proverbs or expressions in your free time? If so, let me know, and I’ll post some of them up.

Hopefully I won’t get swamped in submissions though. You know, be careful what you wish for, you just might count your chickens before they hatch.

Hello everybody!

This post really has two reasons for existence. The first, a linguistic reason, is to pose a question to the readers about our use and perception of language. The second is to post a series of pictures (not my own) that will assuredly make the reader smile and/or laugh. Hopefully you’ll enjoy both.

Caturday

From what I gather, the phenomenon of funny cat pictures began on one particular web image board. I’m not going to give the name of the board as it’s an board where people can post anonymously, so there’s frequently content there I don’t want to endorse. Regardless, a tradition called Caturday arose. On Saturdays, people would find pictures of cats with interesting expressions, then caption them in humorous ways. These have been posted in various places on the internet, and it’s not uncommon for them to show up in random discussions on all sorts of sites. Recently, I went looking for more of them (as I find them quite funny), and found a treasure trove of cats, strangely enough, posted on a BodyBuilding forum. Based on these images, I’ve been able to make a Linguistic observation:

Cats have bad grammar, and it’s funnier that way

In many of the pictures I found, I’ve noted pretty significant deviations from conventional English Grammar. Ranging from the incorrect application of language rules (”eated”), to internet style contractions (”plz” for “Please”), to out and out incorrect verb agreement (”I are serious cat”), many of these captions use blatantly bad grammar. Here are some examples:

The fact of the matter, though, is that the bad grammar somehow makes it funnier. Somehow, saying “I am a Serious Cat, and this is a Serious Thread” doesn’t have the same ring to it. The best explanation I’ve come up with is that the grammatical errors remind English speakers of the speech of children, and thus, come up with more cuteness. If you have any ideas, I’d like to hear them.

A meme is born

Before I go, I’d like to talk a bit more about the “im in ur ____, ____ing your ____” construction. I’m not sure what the original version was, but since its inception, it has truly become an internet meme, a sort of internet in-joke that’s become a cliché due to frequent posting. There are lots of different variations on this construction (”im in your fridge, eating ur foodz”), and it has even been applied outside of cats. This past November, when the Democrats gained control of the US Congress, this picture promptly popped up online featuring the new Speaker of the House:

Just to think, from such humble roots, Caturday has spawned a new internet sensation reaching as far as the US Congress. Oh, the glory of the internet.

Followup: I’ve discussed the LOLCat dialect a bit more recently, so if you’re interested in this phenomenon and the heights it has reached, you might want to read “im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect”