Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman@yahoo.com> writes:
>Well, monopthongal /e/ exists in your native language, unlike mine and my
>father's.

For English, some phonetic notations (Wells in the LPD)
employ the symbol "e" as in:

"dress" [dres]
"bed" [bed]

. Other notations use [ɛ] (the Kenyon and Knott system) or
[ᴇ] (Luciano Canepari) there.

On 18/05/22 06:53, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 12:04:15 PM UTC-6, Quinn C wrote:
>> * Jerry Friedman:
>>> On Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 8:40:31 PM UTC-6, Lewis wrote:
>>>> In message <t5f13t$b48$1...@dont-email.me> Peter Moylan
>>>> <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>>>> As a French word, née does not mean "before marriage".
>>>
>>>> Which is relevant in alt.usage.french.
>>>
>>>>> It means "born". So it *should* apply regardless of the
>>>>> reason for the name change. But of course in English it
>>>>> doesn't, so far.
>>>
>>>> The dictionary seems to imply it COULD be used that way, but I
>>>> have only seen it used for a woman who changes her name (not
>>>> even used when a man changes his name) after marriage.
>>>
>>> My father was fond of "né" in talking about de-Judaized names. If
>>> someone named Irwin Ormont was mentioned, Dad would say, "Né
>>> Goldberg." (I don't know how he would have written it, maybe
>>> "née" or "nee". I'm disturbed that I can't remember whether he
>>> pronounced it "nee" or "nay".)
>
>> Welcome back!

Yes, you were missed.

> Thank you!
>
>> When you say "pronounce 'nee'", do you mean /ni/? Is that really
>> an option?

Surely everyone has heard of the knights who pronounce it that way.

> Yes. Dad never studied French, and liked to pronounce French words
> with comically English sounds. And of course it's how we got the
> pronunciation of "retiree", etc.
>
>> I'm likely to pronounce it with a French accent (as /ne/ instead of
>> /neI/.)
>
> Well, monopthongal /e/ exists in your native language, unlike mine
> and my father's.

I've only ever heard "nay" in English, but I can well imagine variants
in other places.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

On 2022-05-17, Rich Ulrich wrote:

> On Tue, 17 May 2022 10:14:22 +0100, Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com>
> wrote:
>
>>On 2022-05-13, Lewis wrote:
>>
>>> In message <rck1lixbcn.ln2@news.ducksburg.com> Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2022-05-12, Lewis wrote:
>>>
>>>>> I would not be at all surprised if the rental car companies had a
>>>>> specific policy of trying not to rent cars to "women drivers" or
>>>
>>>> ...even though (as any insurance company knows) women are on average
>>>> better drivers than men.
>>>
>>> They may know that now. Did they in the 1970s? I doubt it.
>>
>>It's hard to google up information about the history of it, but I'd be
>>surprised if they didn't know it. I'm sure they based premiums on age
>>then, & just comparing the statistics between men & women wouldn't
>>have required any modern "big data analytics" either.
>
> Women would have tended to have far fewer accidents per driver
> in the 1970s because far fewer women had their own cars and
> the default driver (in almost any family) was male.
>
> Teenage boys, as a group, were already notable for excess
> accidents, from police reports of accidents. IIRC, there was
> also concern about the oldest drivers -- That led to such
> things as legal requirements for tests of vision, or periodic
> re-testing of driving skills. And cheaper insurance rates
> for senior citizens who took a safe-driving course.
>
> Teenage girls did not add much to the insurance rates.
>
> I suspect it could be as late as the 1990s when computerized
> files made it possible to dig out good figures that included
> accidents per mile, by age and sex. It would have taken a
> bit of work ... and confounding factors might have led to
> closer specification of what information companies collect
> from their drivers. I don't know what they ask, from multi-
> driver families, that they use for setting rates.

I assumed the bigger insurance companies (at least) would have the
resources --- definitely the motivation --- to work out accidents per
mile by gender back then, but ICBW.

> "Data mining" came a decade later, when big files had been
> amassed and disc space became cheap enough (and fast enough)
> for online storage and processing. And much more random
> statistical investigations. IIRC, I have seen accident rates
> correlated with "how close the home is" from (a) a church
> or (b) a liquor store.

Well, if you live really close to the liquor store you might walk
there instead of driving...

--
This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man
who was killed because he had lousy ratings.