At • Hacker News Board

Re: At

#11

Post by panarky » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 2:39 AM UTC

jypepin wrote: post #4

gk1 wrote: post #2

I believe in Russian it's called "Sobachka", or "Doggy." (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Arrobase in french. Don't think it means anything.

Same origin as the Spanish and Portuguese arroba[1], the Arabic ar-rubʿ (الربع). It's a unit of weight[2], "the fourth part (of a quintal), the term defined the load that a donkey or mule could carry."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#Names_in_other_language...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroba

Re: At

#12

Post by madeofpalk » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 2:42 AM UTC

timlimfimbim wrote: post #10

madeofpalk wrote: post #5

When I worked in retail, I noticed Indian people would pronounce it something like 'attarrat', with a hard R in the middle. It took me a while to catch on to what was ment by that, but i never really pushed it much further to get the 'proper' pronounciation.

I believe they were saying "at the rate".

They would say it when reading out their email address, exactly where I would normally say 'at'.

Re: At

#13

Post by wuaifeng » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 2:48 AM UTC

"I envy my colleagues that get to play with snails and monkeys while coding in Objective-C!"

Re: At

#14

Post by sramsay » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 2:50 AM UTC

Dating in Korea:

"Hey, really enjoyed talking to you! Can I have your email address?"

"Sure, it's john sea snail hotmail dot com."

"Oh. Great."

Re: At

#15

Post by acangiano » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 2:56 AM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #7

No one actually uses „Klammeraffe“ in German. It’s just „at“ (English pronunciation – most of the time). I wonder how widespread the use of those alternative names for “at” is in other languages he lists. In German „Klammeraffe“ is this weird, unwieldy nickname that used to be somewhat fashionable a long time ago (mid-nineties maybe, whenever many people where first confronted with email addresses). I remember it bei…

In Italian, "chiocciola" and "chiocciolina" are definitely the most common.

Re: At

#16

Post by kiyoto » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 3:03 AM UTC

In Japanese, the sign itself is called "attomaaku" ("at mark") but it's pronounced as "atto" when dictated. So someone's email would be johnsmith-at-gmail-dot-com, and if you ask a Japanese person to pronounce the symbol, they would say "atto". However, if you show them the symbol and ask them _what it is_, they probably would say "attomaaku".

Semiotics is fascinating.

Re: At

#17

Post by sbierwagen » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 3:04 AM UTC

Fun fact about HN's bad visual design: submissions with very short titles typically get huge amounts of upvotes as people try to click on the submission link, and hit the upvote button by accident. Since you can't revoke upvotes for dumb submissions, the number climbs without limit.

Re: At

#18

Post by vidarh » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 3:08 AM UTC

elektronaut wrote: post #9

In Norwegian the official name is "krøllalfa", meaning "curly alpha". Hip in the 90s, but I don't think I've heard anyone call it that in years. I was actually surprised when I learned that "at" was the proper English name and usage. I had always assumed it was a symbol that had been co-opted into network addresses because it was accessible from the keyboard and kinda looked like an a. One advantage of the internatio…

In the 80's it was not uncommon to hear "snabel-A" in Norway too, quite possibly because Danish and Swedish computer magazines were more commonly seen in Norway before more Norwegian magazines gained traction.

"Alfrakrøll" was quite common for some time. Personally I don't think I've ever used krøllalfa - it just sounds dumb to me. "Alfrakrøll" is still what I'd prefer.

Then again, I've lived outside of Norway for 14 years, and it's quite fascinating to come back for visits and come across word usage I'm totally unfamiliar with. Especially since starting with home computers in the early 80's means English technology terms got deeply ingrained for me long before Norwegian versions started gaining traction.

Re: At

#19

Post by ternaryoperator » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 3:12 AM UTC

"[chiocciola] is fun to say, too. Something like 'chee-o-cho-la' but with more exotic hand gestures."

The initial "chi" in Italian is pronounced like "kee" (e.g. chianti). So this would be pronounced "kee-o-chio-la"

Re: At

#20

Post by ANTSANTS » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 3:13 AM UTC

timlimfimbim wrote: post #10

madeofpalk wrote: post #5

When I worked in retail, I noticed Indian people would pronounce it something like 'attarrat', with a hard R in the middle. It took me a while to catch on to what was ment by that, but i never really pushed it much further to get the 'proper' pronounciation.

I believe they were saying "at the rate".

Not sure why people are downvoting you. The @ symbol is hundreds of years old and originally meant "at the rate of" (as in, "10 boxes @ $1" means "10 boxes for $1 apiece"). It's perfectly possible that the Indian population could have picked this up and perhaps contracted it a bit during the reign of the British Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/@_symbol