Ideas, Happenings, and Shiny Things!

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

How do you say '@'?

Apparently, it is not always pronounced "at," at least in other countries. In fact, there are many more interesting ways of saying it. There is an article here and the original source is here. Some of the highlights:

Israeli: shtrudl 'strudel' [yes, the pastry]

Afrikaans: aapstert 'monkey's tail'

Czech: zavinac 'pickled herring'

Danish: snabel 'elephant's trunk'

Hungarian: kukac 'worm/maggot'

Italian: chiocciola 'snail' [note: I didn't know that this meant snail while I was in Italy... I just thought it was a funny name for the '@' sign. ;-) ]

Taiwan Mandarin Chinese: xiao lao-shu 'little mouse'

Swedish: snabel-a 'a with an elephant's trunk'

Thai: 'ai tua yiukyiu 'the wiggling worm-like character'

All considerably more interesting than "at," don't you think?

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Posted by Christa at 10:44 AM.