Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I learned a new French word today (I think...)

I knew there was some kind of foreign-ey expression using "ne" (sic) that related to the change in a woman's maiden name vs married name. And I had occasion today to write an email about renaming my co-worker's network accounts, so I tried to use it. But I wasn't sure if I'd written the expression correctly (I hadn't). It literally took me FOREVER to figure-out a useful search in Google, mostly because I was searching for the wrong word -- it's really spelled "nee" (not "ne").

I had originally written "Please rename accounts for Mary Uglyname ne Smith" (the names have been changed to protect the innocent). But now I've learned that "nee" means "born" in French and so I should have written "Mary Smith nee Uglyname."

P.S. Another quick lesson? Inserting (sic) is supposed to mean, "Yes, I know that preceding word is misspelled!" Or, at least I think that's what it means...

P.P.S. I threw that misused "literally" in there just to mess with my wife :-)
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