@ The Brink
Disclaimer: Languages fascinate me.
Computer geekery, as a rule, does not.
But the subjects cross paths in this piece by Nancy Szokan on the lowly "@" sign around the world.
I'm talking on the phone to an Israeli writer who goes by the nickname Winkie, and I want to send him some information. "What's your e-mail?" I ask.
"Winkie M, Strudel, Yahoo dot com," he says.
"Strudel?" I said. "As in the pastry?" (I'm thinking: Maybe he has a little bakery on the side?) "You mean WinkieM, then s-t-r-u-d- ... "
"No, no -- it's strudel, that little A sign," he says. "I think you call it 'at'?"
Szokan goes on to explain how the lowly "at" is named around the world:
In Russia, for instance, it seems that the most common word for the @ is sobaka (dog) or sobachka (doggie) -- apparently because a computer game popular when e-mail was first introduced involved chasing an @-shaped dog on the screen...Apparently it reminds a lot of people around the world of a monkey with a long and curling tail; thus, their e-mail addresses might include variations of the word for monkey. That's majmunsko in Bulgarian, malpa in Polish, majmun in Serbian and shenja e majmunit ("the monkey sign") in Albanian. Or they might call it an "ape's tail": aapstert in Afrikaans, apsvans in Swedish, apestaart in Dutch, Affenschwanz among German-speaking Swiss. (Many Germans apparently used to say Klammeraffe, meaning "clinging monkey," or Schweinekringel, a pig's tail -- though these days it's usually just "at.") In Croatian, they call the sign "monkey," but they say the word in English. Go figure.
Does the sign make you think of a snail? That's what you might get in Korean (dalphaengi) or Italian (chiocciola) or sometimes Hebrew (shablul, when they're not saying strudel). The French apparently flirted briefly with escargot. "Yes, it looks like a snail," noted one amused Korean. "But isn't it funny and ironic, since 'snail mail' is opposed to e-mail in English?"
Do you see the @ as a curled-up cat? That's why it's sometimes kotek or "kitten" in Poland and miuku mauku in Finland, where cats say "miau."
And on, and on.
She also notes that, unfortunately, "At" is taking over and driving out the local appelations.
Bummer. I may have to adopt one the the endangered words, in the spirit of conservation.
I'm torn between "Dalphaengi", "Chiocciola" and "Kotek".
Posted by Mitch at
October 7, 2005 05:20 AM
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That little swirly @ symbol reminds me of the Arabic symbol for "Allah".
Posted by: Terry at October 7, 2005 05:37 AMBack in college (mid-to-late 1980's), my peers and I were turned on to the glories of the tilde.
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Except that no one knew what to call it. Most of the guys somehow decided, for no obvious reasom, that it was a "twaddle".
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I had already gotten used to calling it "the squiggly thing", an appellation which won support in some quarters, but of course my idea never caught on with the general populace. "Twaddle" remained the preferred term until graduation, at which point several twaddlers became serious computer scientists and suddenly learned how to say "tilde".
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Someone should write an article, if not a book, about tilde.
Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at October 7, 2005 06:00 AM~~~~~~~~~~~
With all the Monkey references, I though you were going to end up calling '@' a 'Nick'
Flash
Posted by: Flash at October 7, 2005 07:58 AMOf course, English computer jargon has its own set of idiosyncratic names for characters. See "bang" (!), "splat" (*), "squiggle" (~), and "hash" (#), for instance. BTW, the Hackers' Dictionary (http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/computers/TheHackersDictionaryofComputerJargon/chap11.html) lists
at sign; at; strudel; each; vortex; whorl;
whirlpool; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
as names for "@".
Frankly, it looks like a paperclip to me (at least in courier).
Posted by: Doug Sundseth at October 7, 2005 11:21 AMActually, if I recall correctly, "Bang" for "!" is a holdover from old journalistic usage.
Posted by: mitch at October 7, 2005 04:59 PM"...a holdover from old journalistic usage."
It might well be. Early computer terminals (as you might be "experienced" enough to know) were often the same teletype terminals used in newsrooms. Can you still print a Ctrl-G and get a beep (it was a bell on the old TTYs)?
-30-
Posted by: Doug Sundseth at October 7, 2005 05:56 PM