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bat:

Where It's At -- and Where It's Not

By Nancy Szokan
Sunday, October 2, 2005
washingtonpost.com

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 Winkie M, 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.



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