In China, it's called "circle a" (圈a), "flowery a" (花a), or "little mouse" (小老鼠). In Taiwan, it's most commonly called "little mouse"
At
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Re: At
#22All I can think is how much longer it must be to speak tweets aloud in other languages. As opposed to "at Jim Lipsey, at Gruber, at Chockenberry, at The Talk Show", now it's "chee-o-cho-la Jim Lipsey, chee-o-cho-la Gruber..."
Sounds like a mouthful already.
Re: At
#23In 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.
atto is about the closest their writing rules allow. It is all pairs like ka, ki, ko, ku, except for n. So all loan words have to be extended if they end illegally.
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#24I speak Russian as my first language. We use "sobaka" the Russian word for dog.
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#25In 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…
I always thought the English version was ampersat.
Re: At
#26I believe in Russian it's called "Sobachka", or "Doggy." (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Собачка – a diminutive form for "dog" – can be used as a
conversational word for "commercial at" (@).
Собака (dog) is vulgar in many contexts in Russian.
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#27In 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…
Dialects might have played in. Krøllalfa is what Språkrådet recommends. I think both are awkward. There's a hair salon by my office called Alfakrøll, which is particularily cringeworthy.
I've always had my computers and devices set to English. Direct translation of technical terms is usually jarring and/or confusing, and impossible to troubleshoot by googling. Especially new concepts that haven't gained traction yet.
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#28For a very long time, I thought the "{" was called "birdwing" because that's how it was explained to me. When I try that now I get very odd looks. Related: http://carlos.bueno.org/brackets-of-the-world.pdf
See also the last page of: http://3e8.org/pub/intercal.pdf
'{' is 'embrace', '@' is 'whirlpool'
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#29We also say "Arobas" in french.
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#30In 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…
I always thought the English version was ampersat.
AFAIK at is short for ampersat.