Of internet slang and its Binisaya translation
In today’s email, a software developer wrote, “FWIW, I am not too concerned about the breadth of the solution.”
The word that stood out could not have been read as fee-weew, we figured, so for lack of internet slang knowledge, we had to rely on Google to reveal what it meant. Apparently, FWIW is a popular internet slang that stands for for what it’s worth.
Writers’ minds do not stop at spelling out acronyms. One had to ask, “Well, what does it mean? How and in what context do we use it?”
According to Google, we use FWIW in the following contexts:
- in emails, when you are giving someone information and you do not know if the information is useful or not
- as a mixture of “in my opinion” and “for your information”
- adds a polite tone to what you’re saying where you try to communicate “You can ignore what I’m going to say, but I think you should hear it anyway.”
- can also be used to inject a snarky, empathetic, or even dismissive tone, depending on sentence context. But as a general rule, any use of “FWIW” that can be replaced with “FYI” has a snarky tone.
- in electronic messages for saying that someone may or may not be interested in what you have to say
The conversation over the term FWIW escalated into wondering whether we, as Filipinos, can fit using the terminology in our context. We thought of its Tagalog equivalent but could not find any.
Of course, as Filipinos who speak Bisaya, we had to challenge ourselves with translating the term in our dialect or thinking of its possible equivalents. Suggestions were:
- Kung ako paistoryahon…
- Ambot lang ninyo ha pero para sa ako…
The curiosity stopped for lack of better ideas.
Well this is just one of those group-curious days at the office where we practice being word-ohs.
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