There are many words in French and English that look very similar to one another but they have totally different meanings and they are called faux amies (false friends). There are several that we have learned about but the other day I learned a new one as I was helping someone find a new hard drive for their computer. I’m slowing learning the different terms that are used to describe computers and their components, since this will be rather important for me to know.

So I was looking at the hard drive specs and there was one that was new to me – Taille de la Mémoire Tampon: 8 Mo. Tampon memory? This was a new one to me and also not very important when getting a new hard drive when you will mainly be using the laptop for email and watching movies, the other specs I was able to make out and we made a choice on which hard drive to purchase. So my guess was that this was just the Buffer Size based on the fact that it was 8 Mo (8MB in Geek-English). I came home and looked up Tampon and the definition is buffer. I’m still looking for a Geek-French-English dictionary to help me understand other standard computer terms – I’ve been tempted to buy Windows XP pour les NULS (Windows XP for Dummies) and see if it will teach me any new terms. Maybe next week I’ll check the library for it, then I won’t be stuck wondering why they are putting tampons in the hard drives.