Where It's At -- and Where It's Not
By Nancy Szokan
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page B02
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'?"
Of course. With a little imagination, I could see that a slice of strudel
resembles the @ sign that separates user name from host in e-mail addresses.
"Strudel!" I hoot. Winkie, agreeing that it's funny, later sends me a list
of words that people in other countries have used for the @ symbol -- most
of them a lot more entertaining (if less efficient) than our simple "at."
The list, it turns out, came from an online site, Herodios.com, and was
based largely on research done in the early days of e-mail by linguist Karen
Steffen Chung of National Taiwan University. Her lengthy collection of
@-words, as well as some additions from Post foreign correspondents, shows
that while many countries have simply adopted the word "at," or call the
symbol something like "circle A" or "curled A," more imaginative
descriptions still hold sway in many places.
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. (Don't laugh; Pac-Man was shaped like a pie with a missing
slice.) So when Natasha gives her e-mail address to someone, it comes out
sounding like she calls herself "Natasha, the dog." "Everybody's used to
it," says Peter Finn, The Post's Moscow correspondent, "but there are still
jokes -- people say 'Natasha, don't be so hard on yourself.' " Ah, those
crazy Russians.
Try this: Look at the @. What does it remind you of? 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, m alpa 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, Aff enschwanz 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. "
In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it can be zavinac , or rolled-up pickled
herring. In Sweden, when it's not a monkey's tail, it's a kanelbulle, or
cinnamon bun. In Hungary, it's kukac, for worm or maggot.
Danes call it snabel, or elephant's trunk. In the tiny parts of France,
Spain and Italy where a disappearing language called Occitan is still
spoken, users call it alabast , which means "little hook." In Mandarin
Chinese, it's xiao lao shu -- "little mouse" -- which must get confusing
given the gizmo of the same name.
Now for the news, also known as the depressing part: As noted by Scott
Herron, the compiler of the list at Herodios.com, some of these more
colorful images appear to be fading, or are already gone. Many of Chung's
correspondents note that their local e-mailers increasingly just say "at."
This might just be a result of the cultural hegemony of English. Or maybe,
as e-mail has gone from exciting new technology to spam-filled work tool, it
has ceased to inspire as much creativity. Instead you get the mundane
Japanese atto maaku -- literally, the "at mark" -- and the Mongolian
buurunhii dotorh aa -- "A in round circle."
More strudel, please.
Nancy Szokan, a Post editor, would love to tell people that her e-mail is
szokann monkey sign washpost.com, but she doesn't live in Albania.
