Do you know that the squiggly little "at" symbol that makes our e-mail go is more colorful in translation.
It's known as an elephant's trunk in Sweden. A monkey in Serbia - and a more, ahem, delicate part of the monkey in Holland. It's a snail in Korea, a little mouse in Taiwan.
In any language, it has come a long way since it was plucked from obscurity by e-mail godfather Ray Tomlinson back in computer-heady 1971. At the time, the character was used almost exclusively by grocers and accountants.
Its use made good sense to an English speaker, shifting definitions from a rate or amount of something to a location.
"It's the only preposition on the keyboard," Tomlinson said from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works as he has for decades at Raytheon BBN Technologies.
But the connection was lost in other languages, and more visual references to food, animals and body parts sprang up, many based on the at’s swirling shape. The symbol is still so unfamiliar that some newspaper and Web systems cannot print it in this story.
"It's sort of like a Rorschach test. The language would sort of see in the at sign something notable from the culture. What people are familiar with is just so varied, so all these crazy things came out of it," said Karen Steffen Chung, an associate professor of linguistics, English and phonetics at National Taiwan University in Taipei.
The symbol is a strudel in Israel and a "rollmop" — for rolled pickled herring fillet — in Czech. It's "sobachka" for doggie in Russian, was dubbed an "alpha curl" in Norway and sometimes goes by "kanelbulle," a type of traditional cinnamon bun, in Swedish.
Sweden can't seem to make up its mind with the longest list of monikers, including elephant's trunk, elephant's ear, monkey’s tail, cat foot, cat's tail, and pretzel.
Chung was so intrigued that she reached out to fellow linguists around the world in (what else) e-mail for their insights.
Among the things she discovered was a variety of terms in Serbian. The word "majmun" is one. It means monkey, appears to have been borrowed from Turkish and was used in "majmunski rep" (monkey tail) and "majmunsko-a" (monkey-ish a). The Serbs also invented "ludo-a" (crazy a) for the symbol. Some countries have "official" terms for the at. The Swedish Language Board deemed it "snabel-a" (trunk-a), meaning "a" with an elephant’s trunk. Elsewhere, English prevails, including in Finland, South Africa
and India.
Tomlinson didn't have the world’s many "ats" on his mind when he developed his e-mail protocol using a nearly forgotten key on a Model 33 Teletype machine for use on ARPANET, one of the networks that became the global Internet.
It was Tomlinson who decided to append the at sign and the host name to a user's login identity. Not only did it make sense as a preposition, but it was unlikely to be confused for any other part of a user’s e-mail address, a term that had not yet surfaced.
The succinctness of the at sign, he thinks, played into the imagery in other languages.
"They certainly all tend to be taking something that's more familiar than some dry piece of commercial signage," Tomlinson said. "It's a simple symbol and it's been adopted and sort of been made into a fan icon for anything to do with computers."
The Museum of Modern Art is a fan. It "acquired" the symbol for its collection earlier this year.
At 69, the low-key Tomlinson is still working as a programmer on projects unrelated to e-mail. Have his two grown daughters made full use of bragging rights over dad’s e-mail claim to fame?
"They try to be cooler than that," Tomlinson said.
It's known as an elephant's trunk in Sweden. A monkey in Serbia - and a more, ahem, delicate part of the monkey in Holland. It's a snail in Korea, a little mouse in Taiwan.
In any language, it has come a long way since it was plucked from obscurity by e-mail godfather Ray Tomlinson back in computer-heady 1971. At the time, the character was used almost exclusively by grocers and accountants.
Its use made good sense to an English speaker, shifting definitions from a rate or amount of something to a location.
"It's the only preposition on the keyboard," Tomlinson said from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he works as he has for decades at Raytheon BBN Technologies.
But the connection was lost in other languages, and more visual references to food, animals and body parts sprang up, many based on the at’s swirling shape. The symbol is still so unfamiliar that some newspaper and Web systems cannot print it in this story.
"It's sort of like a Rorschach test. The language would sort of see in the at sign something notable from the culture. What people are familiar with is just so varied, so all these crazy things came out of it," said Karen Steffen Chung, an associate professor of linguistics, English and phonetics at National Taiwan University in Taipei.
The symbol is a strudel in Israel and a "rollmop" — for rolled pickled herring fillet — in Czech. It's "sobachka" for doggie in Russian, was dubbed an "alpha curl" in Norway and sometimes goes by "kanelbulle," a type of traditional cinnamon bun, in Swedish.
Sweden can't seem to make up its mind with the longest list of monikers, including elephant's trunk, elephant's ear, monkey’s tail, cat foot, cat's tail, and pretzel.
Chung was so intrigued that she reached out to fellow linguists around the world in (what else) e-mail for their insights.
Among the things she discovered was a variety of terms in Serbian. The word "majmun" is one. It means monkey, appears to have been borrowed from Turkish and was used in "majmunski rep" (monkey tail) and "majmunsko-a" (monkey-ish a). The Serbs also invented "ludo-a" (crazy a) for the symbol. Some countries have "official" terms for the at. The Swedish Language Board deemed it "snabel-a" (trunk-a), meaning "a" with an elephant’s trunk. Elsewhere, English prevails, including in Finland, South Africa
and India.
Tomlinson didn't have the world’s many "ats" on his mind when he developed his e-mail protocol using a nearly forgotten key on a Model 33 Teletype machine for use on ARPANET, one of the networks that became the global Internet.
It was Tomlinson who decided to append the at sign and the host name to a user's login identity. Not only did it make sense as a preposition, but it was unlikely to be confused for any other part of a user’s e-mail address, a term that had not yet surfaced.
The succinctness of the at sign, he thinks, played into the imagery in other languages.
"They certainly all tend to be taking something that's more familiar than some dry piece of commercial signage," Tomlinson said. "It's a simple symbol and it's been adopted and sort of been made into a fan icon for anything to do with computers."
The Museum of Modern Art is a fan. It "acquired" the symbol for its collection earlier this year.
At 69, the low-key Tomlinson is still working as a programmer on projects unrelated to e-mail. Have his two grown daughters made full use of bragging rights over dad’s e-mail claim to fame?
"They try to be cooler than that," Tomlinson said.
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that's intersting!
I had no idea that the @ had such a history. This was really interesting.