By S. Rowan Wolf
I ran across an article by Nancy Szokan in the 10/02/05 Washington Post Where It's At -- and Where It's Not (see end of post for article). This is an article about the symbol included in every email address. You know ... @
Szokan talks about how the @ is referred to in different nations - now that's a novel thought. One I certainly haven't spent even a passing musing on. One of the things she asks in the article is what does @ remind you of?
Well, I hadn't thought about that either, but apparently other places in the world have. Herodios.com has a detailed discussion of how various nations refer to this "common" symbol. They include pig's tail, strudel, ear, "rollmops" - pickled herrings rolled in a jar, "swinging monkey," etc.
Now what is interesting beyond this bit of cultural difference that came to me is "where did the @ sign come from and what does it mean?"
The meaning I am most familiar with is as a unit of cost. For examble 3 pounds @ $2.00 a pound. Looking at the Symbols.com Dictionary (explained also at Herdios.com) is that @ is a financial and commerce symbol. Interestingly, in my old unabridged dictiony it also means an economic range where it is "to" rather than "at. For example, shoes $15 @ $40.
Using the @ sign as the universal email designator, is not universal in how it is referred to, and that it underwent a shift in meaning to get to its most common usage today. At (@) in the traditional sense means and meant "per" or a price per unit designation. In the other customary usage @ means "to," which is a price range designation.
So, when we use the @ sign in an email (rowan@uncommonthought.com) we are using it as a locational designation - even though that location is virtual rather than physical. Call me nuts, but I think that is a fascinating shift of symbol meaning, as well as the movement of a special use symbol into common use.
So who is to "blame" for starting this particular symbology transformation? According to Symbols.com Dictionary it was the brain child of Ray Tomlinson. Tomlinson was an engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newma - the company that got the government contract for ARPANET which was the precursor of the internet. (As a side note, that was a military contract and the "backbone" of the internet runs through the Department of Defense, buth that is another story).
Tomlinson needed a symbol that would not be part of anyone's name or a machine name. He selected the @ sign to separate the person's name from the machine (now an email provider's) name. It is perhaps just "luck" that the symbol also is referred to in most English-speaking nations as "at." But luck or not, it transformed both the usage of the symbol and its meaning.
The other interesting aspect is that language/nation difference in referring to the @ symbol as something other than "at" - or "to" - whatever else is going on. I assume that while @ was a standard symbol in English-speaking nations commercial and financial areas, that it was not a common "global" symbol even in the original symbolic meanings. OR, the what that "at" translates to is not the happy coincidence of double meaning that it is in English (and the same would be true of the "to" translation).
So we have a variety of very cultural things going on in this one little symbol. On one hand the transformation of meaning within a linguistic (and technological) group, and on the other an example of cultural diversity. That seems pretty unique and notable to me.
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WP October 2, 2005, By: Nancy Szokan.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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 (chinchilla) 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.
Most of S. Rowan Wolf's commentaries can be read here or visit the Panoptic World homepage.